belief

n.

1. Mental conviction

   credit, credence, acceptance, trust, avowal, conviction, confidence, profession, opinion, notion, persuasion, position, understanding, faith, assent, mindset, surmise, suspicion, thesis, knowledge, feeling, sentiment, conclusion, presumption, hypothesis, thinking, hope, intuition, assurance, expectation, axiom, deduction, judgment, certainty, mind, impression, assumption, conjecture, postulation, theorem, divination, fancy, presupposition, supposition, notion, apprehension, theory, view, viewpoint, guess, conception, reliance, dependence, idea, inference.

2. That which is believed

   creed, credo, tenet, dogma; see faith 2, tenet.

belief, the term of broadest application in this comparison, implies mental acceptance of something as true, even though absolute certainty may be absent; faith implies complete, unquestioning acceptance of something, esp. something not supported by reason, even in the absence of proof; trust implies assurance, often apparently intuitive, in the reliability of someone or something; confidence also suggests such assurance, esp. when based on reason or evidence; credence suggests mere mental acceptance of something that may have no solid basis in fact See also syn. study at opinion.