kernel of truth

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kernel of truth (plural kernels of truth)

1. (idiomatic) A core accuracy at the heart of a claim or narrative which also contains dubious or fictitious elements.

   There may be a kernel of truth in the story of how George Washington confessed to his father that he chopped down the cherry tree.

   • 1863 October 24, “Latin and Cricket”, in The Albion, A Journal of News, Politics and Literature, volume 41, number 48, New York, page 513:

     Whether the Duke of Wellington really said of the Eton playing-fields that it was there that the battle Waterloo was won, may fairly be doubted. The story has many elements of the myth about it; but, like other myths, it has a kernel of truth.

   • 1955, F. Schmidl, "The problem of scientific validation in psycho-analytic interpretation," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol 36 no 2 (Mar/Apr), pp. 105-113.

     This statement will be unacceptable to many biographers and historians, but there seems to be a definite kernel of truth in it.

   • 2003 September 7, “The New Season/Film: Big Fish”, in The New York Times, page AR74:

     It's about a young man (Billy Crudup) who tries to distill the true biography of his dying father (Albert Finney) by looking for the kernels of truth in the many tall tales he has told.