What Does Sincere Mean?
Sincere describes someone who is honest and means what they say or feel. A sincere person is not acting for show, and nothing is hidden behind a smile.
You cannot measure sincerity with a ruler. You notice it in the words, the tone and whether the actions match.
🗣️ Natural Examples
Her thank-you note to the teacher was sincere.
Grandma gave a sincere smile when she saw the drawing.
He gave a sincere apology after bumping into the other player.
"My sincere thanks for the delicious soup!" said Dad.
🛠️ How to Use It
Sincere is an adjective. It usually comes before a noun (a sincere friend) or after verbs such as be, feel, look or sound (he sounded sincere).
Its comparative is usually more sincere and its superlative is usually most sincere.
The adverb is sincerely, which describes how something is done or said, as in she sincerely hopes you feel better. Letters often end with the adverb, as in Yours sincerely.
🤝 Common Word Partners
- a sincere apology
- sincere thanks
- a sincere smile
- a sincere wish
- sincere interest (real interest, not polite pretending)
🌳 Word Family
- sincerely (adverb): She sincerely hopes you feel better.
- sincerity (noun): Nobody doubted the sincerity of his smile.
👯 Similar and Related Words
- honest: tells the truth. It is close to sincere, but sincere focuses on whether your words and feelings match what you show.
- genuine: real, not fake. A genuine smile and a sincere smile are very close.
- benevolent: kind, and wanting to help. It is about kind wishes, not honesty, so a benevolent person is not always sincere, and a sincere person is not always benevolent.
- The opposites are duplicity, which is deceitful behaviour, like saying one thing while planning another, and mendacity, which is untruthfulness or the habit of lying. Mendacity and duplicity are both useful to learn next to sincere.
⚠️ Common Mistakes
Sincere or sincerely?
❌ She made a sincerely apology.
✅ She made a sincere apology.
Spelling
❌ sincear, sinceer
✅ sincere: it ends in -cere, with an E at the very end.
Serious or sincere?
❌ My brother is very silly, so he cannot be sincere.
✅ My brother is very silly, but he is sincere when he says sorry.
💬 In a Conversation
Ana: Thanks for the lift to school. I'm glad you offered.
Ben: Your thanks sound sincere, so I'm happy to do it again.
Ana: It is. Same time tomorrow?
Ben: Same time, and I'll bring the good biscuits.
🕵️ Where Does It Come From?
Sincere came into English from French, which had taken it from the Latin sincerus, meaning "pure" or "unmixed". Where the Latin word itself came from is uncertain. Scholars have made a few guesses, such as "of one growth, unmixed" or a lost Latin word meaning "whole, intact", but none is proven.
You will often hear a neater story: that Roman sculptors filled cracks in statues with wax, so an honest statue was one made sine cera, Latin for "without wax". It is a tempting story, and it has been repeated for years. It is very probably a myth. The Oxford English Dictionary does not accept it, and the history of the word gives it no real support.
💡 The OddLingo Trick
Some word stories sound too neat to be true. Before you repeat one, ask: does a dictionary back it up? The wax story fails that test, but the word still does its honest job. A sincere word means exactly what it says, and so should your story about it.