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perjure

/ˈpɝd͡ʒɚ/verb

perjure is a verb meaning “To knowingly and willfully make a false statement of witness while in court” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-E-R-J-U-R-E and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does perjure mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To knowingly and willfully make a false statement of witness while in court.

    He perjured himself.

  2. 2

    To cause to violate an oath or a vow; to cause to make oath knowingly to what is untrue; to make guilty of perjury; to forswear; to corrupt.

  3. 3

    To make a false oath to; to deceive by oaths and protestations.

noun

  1. 1

    obsoleteA perjured person.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce perjure?

  • UK /ˈpɜːd͡ʒə(ɹ)/
  • US /ˈpɝd͡ʒɚ/

Perjure has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-perjure.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of perjure

  • perjures present, singular, he/she/it
  • perjuring participle, present
  • perjured participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is perjure?

Perjure appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 105,204th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Perjure in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense knowingly make a false statement of witness:

LanguageWords
Frenchparjurer
Germaneinen Meineid schwören, eine Falschaussage machen, lügen
Spanishperjurar

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does perjure come from?

From Old French parjurer, from Latin periūrō.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).