Perjury

How to spell perjury

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce perjury

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does perjury mean?

1. nounThe criminal offence of deliberately giving false testimony while under oath.

Perjury in a sentence

• The witness was charged with perjury after the recordings contradicted his sworn statement.

• Signing a false declaration under oath can amount to perjury.

Where does perjury come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Perjury comes from the Latin periurium, meaning a false oath, which was built from the verb periurare, 'to swear falsely'. That verb joins per-, here carrying the sense 'falsely' or 'to the detriment of', with iurare, 'to swear', a verb rooted in ius or iuris, the Latin word for law or right that also gives us 'justice', 'jury', and 'jurisdiction'. English took the word in the 1300s through Anglo-Norman and Old French parjurie, where the swearing of a false oath was already a serious offence. The spelling trap sits in that buried 'jur' root: the middle is spelled with a 'j' followed by 'ur', exactly as in 'jury', not the 'ger' or 'jer' that the unstressed second syllable seems to suggest. Remembering that perjury and jury share the same Latin oath-swearing ancestor keeps the spelling on track.

How the word is built

• per- (to the detriment of, falsely)
• jur (to swear, from Latin iurare/ius)
• -y (noun suffix)