bona fide
UK/ˌbəʊ.nəˈfaɪ.di//ˈboʊnə.faɪd/
bona fide adverb: in good faith; genuinely, sincerely.
Adverb
bona fide (not comparable)
- In good faith; genuinely, sincerely.
- But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his; […]1761, [Laurence Sterne], chapter X, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume III, London: […] R[obert] and J[ames] Dodsley […], →OCLC, pages 29–30
- Let thinking people, then, judge what must be the fate of a church, whose fundamental doctrines are disbelieved by men of sense and inquiry, whose articles are well known not to be subscribed bonâ fide by those who officiate in it […].1791, Joseph Priestley, Letters to Burke, section XII
- Synonyms:
- bonafidely
Adjective
bona fide (not comparable)
- In good faith; sincere; without deception or ulterior motive.
- Although he failed, the prime minister made a bona fide attempt to repair the nation's damaged economy.
- It is impossible to say how far this adherence to a creed is a bona fide reversion to a devout habit of mind, and how far it is to be classed as a case of protective mimicry assumed for the purpose of an outward assimilation to canons of reputability borrowed from foreign ideals.1899, Thorstein Veblen, “Devout Observances”, in The Theory of the Leisure Class […] , New York: Macmillan, →OCLC
- Genuine; not counterfeit.
- This is a bona fide Roman coin.
- To Billy Byrne, then, Pesita was a real general, and Billy, himself, a bona fide captain.1914 October – 1916 July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published 31 October 1921, →OCLC
- Antonyms:
- bogus, counterfeit
bona fide meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Arabic
bona fide in Tamil
- உரிமையுடைய, நல்லெண்ணத்துடன்
bona fide in Malayalam
- genuine, authentic, real
- ഉത്തമവിശ്വാസത്തോടെയുള്ള, ഹൃദയപൂർവ്വമായ, യഥാർത്ഥമായ, നിർവ്യാജമായ, ആധികാരികമായ, അവ്യാജ
bona fide in Kannada
- ನಂಬಿಕೆಯ
bona fide in Arabic
- done in good faith
- عن حسن نيَة
Synonyms of bona fide
Antonyms
Forms of bona fide
| alternative form (rare) | bonâ fide |
|---|---|
| alternative form (obsolete) | bona fyde |
Origin of bona fide
Unadapted borrowing from Latin bonā fidē (“in good faith”).
Words formed from bona fide
Questions about bona fide
- What does bona fide mean?
- Bona fide means in good faith; genuinely, sincerely.
- What is bona fide in Tamil?
- Bona fide in Tamil is உரிமையுடைய, நல்லெண்ணத்துடன். See Bona fide meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is bona fide?
- Bona fide can be an adverb or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce bona fide?
- Bona fide is pronounced /ˌbəʊ.nəˈfaɪ.di/ (UK).
Words near bona fide in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bona fide (page history and authors); bona fide (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bona fide (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bona fide (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bona-fide 2.ogg, en-au-bona fide.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bona fide.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bona_fide. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.