PERJURE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does perjure mean? 

• PERJURE (verb)
  The verb PERJURE has 1 sense:

1. knowingly tell an untruth in a legal court and render oneself guilty of perjury

  Familiarity information: PERJURE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERJURE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they perjure    ... he / she / it perjures   
Past simple: perjured   
Past participle: perjured   
-ing form: perjuring   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Knowingly tell an untruth in a legal court and render oneself guilty of perjury

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "perjure" is one way to...):

lie (tell an untruth; pretend with intent to deceive)

"Perjure" entails doing...:

depone; depose; swear (make a deposition; declare under oath)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Sentence example:

They perjure themselves

Derivation:

perjurer (a person who deliberately gives false testimony)

perjury (criminal offense of making false statements under oath)

 Context examples 

"Iss!" said Demi the perjured, blissfully sucking his sugar, and regarding his first attempt as eminently successful.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he was party to a police conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and perjured, that Jim Hall was guiltless of the crime charged.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror—I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its abode—whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed—and rise before me in this chamber.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)