Etymology

perjury

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Today it means: The deliberate giving of false or misleading testimony under oath. Full definition →

Latin perjūrāre
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The story

  1. Latin · derived fromperjūrāre“swear falsely”
  2. English todayperjury

From Anglo-Norman perjurie, from Latin perjūrāre (“swear falsely”), from per- + jūrāre. Displaced native Old English mānāþ (literally “false oath”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.