perjury
/ˈpɜː(ɹ)d͡ʒəɹi/noun
perjury is spelled P-E-R-J-U-R-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is perjery: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 103 of all searches for the word. Perjury is a noun meaning “The deliberate giving of false or misleading testimony under oath”. The plural of perjury is perjuries.
How many letters and syllables are in perjury?
| Letters | 7: P-E-R-J-U-R-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 2.0 times per million words; the 19,336th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, perjery, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell perjury?
Perjury is spelled P-E-R-J-U-R-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 104 of the searches for perjury in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is perjury?
Perjury appears 2.0 times per million words in written English, the 19,336th 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).
How do you pronounce perjury?
- /ˈpɜː(ɹ)d͡ʒəɹi/
Perjury has 3 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-perjury.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of perjury
- perjuries plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does perjury mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The deliberate giving of false or misleading testimony under oath.
We declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Perjury in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense deliberate giving of false or misleading testimony under oath:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | faux témoignage |
| German | Meineid |
| Portuguese | perjúrio |
| Spanish | perjurio |
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 perjury come from?
From Anglo-Norman perjurie, from Latin perjūrāre (“swear falsely”), from per- + jūrāre. Displaced native Old English mānāþ (literally “false oath”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).