(no subject)

[sillygoosegirl]

Does trust describe an action or a feeling/thing, in your opinion?

For example, if I say, "I trust my friend with my car." Does that imply an action: "I have given my friend my car keys or otherwise given her access to it." Or does it imply that I hold a feeling: "I believe that if I were to give my friend access to my car, nothing bad would happen (of if it did it would be made up for through $$ or friendship)."

I think I would tend to call the latter faith, and for the sake of clarity, I'd like the word trust to therefore imply the former. While the dictionary.com definitions tend to lend themselves to this distinction to some extent, it also calls trust and faith synonyms. So go figure.

The two concepts are clearly related... a person chooses to "trust" (as in taking the action), very often as a direct result of feeling "trust" (as in faith). But I think the distinction is important too.

Comments

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

I think that "I trust my friend with my car" means "were I to give the car to my friend, I believe nothing bad would happen," while "I've entrusted my friend with my car" means "I gave the car to my friend temporarily." Or it might be like: "I let A use my car." "Oh, really?" "I trust A with my car." But "I trust my friend with my car" alone doesn't imply that you are actually entrusting the car to that friend.

Not like anyone ever says "entrust" anymore though.