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PlainSpell

vouchsafe

vouch·safe/ˌvaʊt͡ʃˈseɪf/verb

vouchsafe is a verb meaning “To graciously give, to condescendingly grant a right, benefit, outcome, etc.; to deign to acknowledge” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-O-U-C-H-S-A-F-E and has 2 syllables (vouch·safe), and it appears about once in every 19 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does vouchsafe mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To graciously give, to condescendingly grant a right, benefit, outcome, etc.; to deign to acknowledge.

  2. 2

    To receive or accept in condescension.

  3. 3

    To disclose or divulge.

    She vouchsafed to me that she regretted ever marrying him.

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

How do you pronounce vouchsafe?

  • US /ˌvaʊt͡ʃˈseɪf/
  • Canada [ˌvʌʊtʃˈseɪf]

Vouchsafe has 2 syllables, split vouch·safe in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-vouchsafe.ogg, En-au-vouchsafe.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of vouchsafe

  • vouchsafes present, singular, he/she/it
  • vouchsafing participle, present
  • vouchsafed participle, past

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

How common is vouchsafe?

Vouchsafe appears about once in every 19 million words in written English, the 130,282nd 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).

Vouchsafe in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense Condescendingly grant a right:

LanguageWords
Frenchaccorder de manière clémente
Germangewähren
Portuguesepermitir

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 vouchsafe come from?

From vouch + safe, written as two words in Middle English and early Modern English.

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