bear out

present singular third person bears out · participle present bearing out · past bore out · participle past borne out

1. transitiveTo corroborate, prove, or confirm; to demonstrate; to provide evidence for.

   bear someone out on something

   4 more examples

   It was a promising idea, but the evidence did not bear out their theory.

   'It looks like being simply a matter of finding this girl, if the conditions up there bear out his tale,' remarked George […]

   1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries

   Time has borne McCarthy out; but see Schank (1983) for a plea that learning should now be reactivated as a central research topic.

   1985, John Haugeland, Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 255

   But the idea that Singapore is a deregulated paradise is not borne out by reality, as anyone who has tried to dispose of a piece of used chewing gum there will know.

   2019 December 17, Howard Davies, “Will the UK really turn into 'Singapore-on-Thames' after Brexit?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

2. To maintain and support to the end; to defend to the last.

   'Tis Company only that can bear a Man out in an ill Thing

   1694, Robert South, “Sermon V, VI., Rom I. 32”, in Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions. […], volume II, London: […] J[ohn] H[eptinstall] for Thomas Bennet […], →OCLC, page 249

   1 more example

   If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark ; weave round them tragic graces ; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts ; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light ; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun ; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind ! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God !

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XXVI, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 128

3. intransitiveTo move quickly and sharply in an outward direction during a race; to veer out.

   That horse always bears out on the turns.