perjury

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English perjurie, also parjurie,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Anglo-Norman parjurie, also perjurie,^[5][2][6][7] and directly borrowed from Latin periūrium (“a false oath, oath-breaking”).^[5][6][8] Etymonline also names Old French parjure (“perjury, false witness”).^[8] The Latin noun comes from periūrus (“swearing falsely”) with the suffix -ium,^[5][9] and is connected with the verb periūrō (“to swear falsely”),^[8][6][10] formed from per- (“away, entirely”) and iūrō (“to swear”),^[8] the stem that also gave jury and injury.^[11] The OED compares the earlier English noun perjure and Old Occitan perjuria.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Swearing to a statement known to be false: before 1393, in Gower's Confessio Amantis.^[5][4] Etymonline dates it to the late 14th century,^[8] and the 1989 OED gave 1292;^[12] Dictionary.com dates it to 1250–1300.^[9] In Anglo-Norman the noun is recorded from 1121–35 with the same meaning.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The word was a legal term from the start.^[8][13] From 1395 an act of perjury, a false oath, could be called a perjury,^[5] and it was also, from 1533 in Thomas More, the breaking of a promise or vow made on oath, a use the OED now calls rare and poetic.^[5] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as a false oath.^[14] Ayto places it among the English words from the Latin stem jūr-, with injury and jury;^[11] the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins explains that early juries had to swear to tell what they knew of an event, and failing to do so was perjury.^[15] Modern law narrows it to a witness who, having been sworn or having affirmed, deliberately gives false evidence;^[16][2][17] Black's Law Dictionary notes that it was also called false swearing, false oath and, in older usage, forswearing.^[17]

Timeline

• before 1393 – false swearing, in Gower.^[5][4]
• 1395 – an instance of perjury; a false oath.^[5]
• 1533 – the breaking of a vow or promise made on oath.^[5] The 1989 OED dated this sense to 1532.^[12]
• 1802–12 – compounds such as perjury-begetting.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. (law) The offence of deliberately giving false or misleading testimony while under oath or affirmation: He was charged with perjury after the trial.^{[18][16][2][17]}
2. An instance of this; a false oath.^[5][17]
3. The breaking of an oath, vow or solemn promise.^[18][2][5]

Word family

• perjurious
• perjuriously
• perjuriousness
• nonperjury

Related words

• perjure
• jury
• injury
• abjure
• just
• justice

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
4. ^ a b c Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ a b c Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ a b c d Garner, Bryan A., ed. (2004), Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West
18. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin