manswear en · VERB
Etymology
From Middle English mansweren, from Old English mānswerian (“to forswear, perjure oneself”), from mān (“bad, criminal, false”) + swerian (“to swear”).
Meanings
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(UK, dialectal, transitive) To swear falsely; perjure oneself.
There are doomed to wade the weltering streams / Men that are mansworn, and they that murderers are.
1916, The Prose Edda (translation), page 82I require of thee, as a man of thy word, on pain of being held faithless, man-sworn, and nidering [footnote: Infamous], to forgive and to receive to thy paternal affection the good knight, Wilfrid of Ivanhoe.
1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter XII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 302:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| manswere | Scotland, alternative | lexicographic | |
| maneswere | Scotland, alternative | lexicographic | |
| mainswear | Northern-England, alternative | lexicographic | |
| manswore | Tense=Past | lexicographic | |
| mansweir | Scotland, alternative | lexicographic | |
| manswears | Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres | lexicographic | |
| manswearing | Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic | |
| mansworn | Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic |