Meanings
present singular third person manswears · participle present manswearing · past manswore · participle past mansworn · alternative Northern England mainswear · alternative Scotland manswere · alternative Scotland maneswere · alternative Scotland maneswere · alternative Scotland mansweir
- UKdialectaltransitiveTo 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 821 more example
I 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 302Synonyms: misswear
Synonyms & antonyms
verbTo swear falsely; perjure oneself.
Origin
- Old Englishmānswerian“to forswear, perjure oneself”
- Middle Englishmansweren
- Englishmanswear
From Middle English mansweren, from Old English mānswerian (“to forswear, perjure oneself”), from mān (“bad, criminal, false”) + swerian (“to swear”).
More words from Middle English, Old English
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
manswear. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/manswear
“manswear.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/manswear. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “manswear,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/manswear.
Source: manswear on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.