Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To decide or declare that one will not or will no longer engage in (an activity or habit, for example).
- intransitive verb To decide or declare that one will not or will no longer use or be associated with (something).
- intransitive verb To disavow under oath.
- intransitive verb To make (oneself) guilty of perjury.
- intransitive verb To swear falsely; commit perjury
- idiom (be forsworn) To commit perjury.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To reject or renounce upon oath; renounce earnestly, determinedly, or with protestations; abjure.
- To deny upon oath or with strong asseveration.
- Synonyms Renounce, Recant, Abjure, etc. See
renounce . For forswear one's self, seeperjure . - To swearfalsely; commit perjury.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To swear falsely; to commit perjury.
- transitive verb To reject or renounce upon oath; hence, to renounce earnestly, determinedly, or with protestations.
- transitive verb To deny upon oath.
- transitive verb to swear falsely; to perjure one's self.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To
renounce ordeny something , especially underoath . - verb intransitive To
commit perjury .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb formally reject or disavow a formerly held belief, usually under pressure
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word forswear.
Examples
-
If bent on wilful aims and lewd I fain forswear thee, ah!
-
The word forswear has appeared in 15 Times articles over the past year, including in a March 14, 2010
NYT > Home Page 2010
-
By those laws, men were forbid to perjure themselves, or to forswear, that is, swear falsely.
-
The questionnaires also asked the American citizens whether they were willing to "forswear" allegiance to the Emperor of Japan (an allegiance they had never sworn in the first place) and whether they were willing to serve on combat duty in the U.S. armed forces "wherever ordered."
-
The questionnaires also asked the American citizens whether they were willing to "forswear" allegiance to the Emperor of Japan (an allegiance they had never sworn in the first place) and whether they were willing to serve on combat duty in the U.S. armed forces "wherever ordered."
-
He must exhibit "humility of spirit," forswear "vengeance" on his political enemies and, MacDonald adds, "accept whatever justice is necessary to resolve the sin."
-
The grim little smile upon her lips when one big girl above Ruth went down before "forswear," spelling it with an extra "e," showed that the teacher considered the miss deserved to fail because of her heedlessness.
Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill Or, Jasper Parloe's Secret Alice B. Emerson
-
Thus they relate to the word "forswear," in the first.
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3 Thomas Clarkson 1803
-
"forswear," they must relate to perjury, and if to perjury, then to a civil oath, or to an oath, where an appeal is made to God by man, as to something relating to himself.
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3 Thomas Clarkson 1803
-
In return, Islamabad must forswear its use of terrorism to weaken India and stop expecting independent Afghanistan to act as a vassal.
A Model for Pakistan's Revival Sadanand Dhume 2011
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.