PERJURY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does perjury mean? 

• PERJURY (noun)
  The noun PERJURY has 1 sense:

1. criminal offense of making false statements under oath

  Familiarity information: PERJURY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERJURY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Criminal offense of making false statements under oath

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

bearing false witness; lying under oath; perjury

Hypernyms ("perjury" is a kind of...):

infraction; infringement; misdemeanor; misdemeanour; violation (a crime less serious than a felony)

Derivation:

perjure (knowingly tell an untruth in a legal court and render oneself guilty of perjury)

 Context examples 

And first, I'll give you a bit of hope; Silver, if we both get alive out of this wolf-trap, I'll do my best to save you, short of perjury.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Also the chimney on fire, the parish engine, and perjury on the part of the Beadle.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Perjury, oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like infirmities, were among the most excusable arts they had to mention; and for these I gave, as it was reasonable, great allowance.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes, or sodomy; for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy; and most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native countries, for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and therefore they were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in other places.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Now your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)