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SWORN
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Bound by or as if by an oath
Example:
sworn enemies
Synonyms:
pledged; sworn
Classified under:
Similar:
committed (bound or obligated, as under a pledge to a particular cause, action, or attitude)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Bound by or stated on oath
Example:
now my sworn friend and then mine enemy
Classified under:
Similar:
bound (bound by an oath)
Antonym:
unsworn (not bound by or stated on oath)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past participle of the verb swear
Context examples:
‘Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy—to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.’
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The Surrogate knows me, when I go down to be sworn; and disposes of me easily, as if there were a Masonic understanding between us.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Dying men had sworn to it, and to the mine the site of which it marked, clinching their testimony with nuggets that were unlike any known grade of gold in the Northland.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
To this end also he made each of us give our word of honor that we would publish or say nothing which would give any exact clue as to the whereabouts of our travels, while the servants were all solemnly sworn to the same effect.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Putting aside the little foibles of a rich young man of fashion, les indescrétions d’une jeunesse dorée, I could have sworn that he was as good a man as I have ever known.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Scarlet with shame and anger, Amy went to and fro six dreadful times, and as each doomed couple, looking oh, so plump and juicy, fell from her reluctant hands, a shout from the street completed the anguish of the girls, for it told them that their feast was being exulted over by the little Irish children, who were their sworn foes.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Even you would not, I dare be sworn, be able to find these places again?
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
I advocate them: I am sworn to spread them.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Why, I could have sworn to it.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
"We are the sworn enemies of society," he found himself quoted as saying in a column interview.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
