"Sooth:" noun, adverb, adjective?

Factual Questions
1

We speak it, occasionally.

Online dictionaries here and there give all three. Anyone have an OED handy?

2

I tend to only think of it as a noun, basically. When it’s the direct object of a transitive verb, it can function as an adverbial phrase. The American Heritage Dictionary also says it’s an adjective, but didn’t give any examples.

3

Yeah, I agree with Johanna - wouldn’t it be a noun? It’s basically equivalent to ‘truth’ in just about every phrase I can think of. ‘In sooth, he doth blah blah blah’; ‘Thou dost say sooth’…

4

I’m having a hard time figuring out how an adjective can be the object of a preposition. Perhaps I’m just being dense; if there are common examples please disabuse me!

I think of “forsooth” or the phrase “for sooth” being adverbial.

5

I do.

The OED says it’s a noun (meaning “truth”) with cites from c. 950; an adjective (meaning “true”) with cites from c. 888; and an adverb (meaning “truly”) with cites from Old English and from c.1000. In all three parts of speech it is archaic; as an adverb it is also rare. It disappeared from the language in the mid-seventeenth century, before being revived in the nineteenth century as a conscious literary archaism, and Scott gets the blame for the revival.

6

Thanks. Any chance you could do a ctrl-c ctrl-v here on the cites?

7

I’ll jump in with those cites.
Noun:

Adjective:

Adverb: