Library / English Dictionary

ALLEGE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Report or maintain

Example:

The registrar says that I owe the school money

Synonyms:

allege; aver; say

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "allege" is one way to...):

assert; asseverate; maintain (state categorically)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "allege"):

plead (make an allegation in an action or other legal proceeding, especially answer the previous pleading of the other party by denying facts therein stated or by alleging new facts)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Sentence example:

They allege that there was a traffic accident

Derivation:

allegement (statements affirming or denying certain matters of fact that you are prepared to prove)

Credits

 Context examples: 

For nature (as the physicians allege) having intended the superior anterior orifice only for the intromission of solids and liquids, and the inferior posterior for ejection, these artists ingeniously considering that in all diseases nature is forced out of her seat, therefore, to replace her in it, the body must be treated in a manner directly contrary, by interchanging the use of each orifice; forcing solids and liquids in at the anus, and making evacuations at the mouth.

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

"That I am not Edward Rochester's bride is the least part of my woe," I alleged: that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Chesterton set the whole world laughing with a series of alleged non-partisan essays on the subject, and the whole affair, controversy and controversialists, was well-nigh swept into the pit by a thundering broadside from George Bernard Shaw.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The injustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all Paris was indignant; and it was judged that his religion and wealth rather than the crime alleged against him had been the cause of his condemnation.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

One of the members for the affirmative offered several arguments of great strength and weight, alleging, that as the Yahoos were the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which nature ever produced, so they were the most restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious; they would privately suck the teats of the Houyhnhnms’ cows, kill and devour their cats, trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually watched, and commit a thousand other extravagancies.

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

Miss Temple, having assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into the charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that she was most happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

After a short silence, he told me, he did not know how I would take what he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family, more like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms’ cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour.

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

It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe; and particularly that his majesty’s imperial heels are lower at least by a drurr than any of his court (drurr is a measure about the fourteenth part of an inch).

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

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.

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