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abjure

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

6 characters

Language

English

word origin

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "abjure", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "abjure" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "abjure" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

abjure is aEnglishverb. It means: To solemnly reject (someone or something); to abandon (someone or something) forever; to disavow, to disclaim, to repudiate. Pronounced /əbˈd͡ʒʊə(ɹ)/.

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Key facts for abjure
PropertyValue
Headwordabjure
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
IPA/əbˈd͡ʒʊə(ɹ)/
Letters6
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

abjure is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for abjure is 6 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əbˈd͡ʒʊə(ɹ)/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for abjure in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: From Late Middle English abjuren (“to give up (something); to recant or renounce (something) under oath”), from Anglo-Norman abjurer, Middle French abiurer, abjurer, and Old French abjurer (“to reject or renounce (something) on oath”) (modern French abjurer… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is abjure, spelled A-B-J-U-R-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    To solemnly reject (someone or something); to abandon (someone or something) forever; to disavow, to disclaim, to repudiate.
  2. 2
    To renounce (something) upon oath; to forswear; specifically, to recant or retract (a heresy or some other opinion); to withdraw.
  3. 3
    To cause (someone) to recant or retract (a heresy or some other opinion).
  4. 4
    Especially in abjure the realm: to swear an oath to leave (a place) forever.
  5. 5
    To cause or compel (someone) to leave a place forever; to banish.
  6. 6
    To solemnly reject; to abandon forever.
  7. 7
    To recant or retract a heresy on oath.
  8. 8
    To swear an oath to leave a place forever.

Etymology

From Late Middle English abjuren (“to give up (something); to recant or renounce (something) under oath”), from Anglo-Norman abjurer, Middle French abiurer, abjurer, and Old French abjurer (“to reject or renounce (something) on oath”) (modern French abjurer), and from their etymon Latin abiūrāre, the present active infinitive of abiūrō (“to deny on oath, recant, renounce, repudiate, abjure”), from ab- (prefix meaning ‘away from, from’) + iūro (“to take an oath, swear, vow”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂yew- (“(adjective) right; straight; upright; (noun) justice; law; right”).

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "abjure"?
"abjure" is spelled A-B-J-U-R-E. The IPA pronunciation is /əbˈd͡ʒʊə(ɹ)/.
What does "abjure" mean?
As a verb, "abjure" means: To solemnly reject (someone or something); to abandon (someone or something) forever; to disavow, to disclaim, to repudiate.
How do you pronounce "abjure"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "abjure" is /əbˈd͡ʒʊə(ɹ)/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What is the origin of the word "abjure"?
From Late Middle English abjuren (“to give up (something); to recant or renounce (something) under oath”), from Anglo-Norman abjurer, Middle French abiurer, abjurer, and Old French abjurer (“to reject or renounce (something) on oath”) (modern Fren... See the full etymology section above for more details.
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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.