asseverate
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of asseverate
First recorded in 1785–95; < Latin assevērātus “spoken in earnest” (past participle of assevērāre ), equivalent to as- as- + sevēr- ( see severe) + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
To asseverate is to declare or affirm something with confidence and seriousness. When you asseverate, you're not just making a statement; you're saying it with such certainty that there's no room for confusion or doubt. The word comes from the Latin root that means "to affirm or maintain." When you asseverate, you speak with conviction. It's like planting your feet and saying, "This is how it is — no doubt about it!" A witness who gives their testimony in the courtroom may asseverate in order to let everyone know that they are telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Vocabulary lists containing asseverate
The Turn of the Screw
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Why merely say something, when they can declare, assert, expostulate, announce, or asseverate it?
From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner
—At this, the Boy suffered some Confusion, then to asseverate, My Tutor is deceased, Sir.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
And I hereby do fully and freely declare and asseverate, that the Woods did not tremble to a kiss, and that the lovers did.
From Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 With His Letters and Journals by Thomas Moore
He could hardly, for his confusion, asseverate the "Yes," when Rabette came running in with the almost unsuitably accented tidings, that the mother was coming.
From Titan: A Romance v. 1 (of 2) by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
We asseverate it in a peculiarly earnest manner, or with increased positiveness as what can not be disputed.
From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary by Noah Webster
In the Daily Mail in 2007, Humphrys asseverated that “vandals” who use “grotesque abbreviations” in their text messages are “pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary”.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 25, 2016
Sometimes, Ms. Silveri asseverated, “ ‘she said’ is just the very best way to say that.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 29, 2015
Nothing like her had been heard, the audience individually and as a body asseverated, in the six years in which Chicago has had an opera company named for it.
From Time Magazine Archive
"There still is in this country," he asseverated, "too great grief, too many mourners, too many wounded men for us to tolerate that."
From Time Magazine Archive
“It is the truth, dear daughter,” Oldcorne asseverated.
From Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder Treason by William Harrison Ainsworth
It was only by addressing his reason in repeated arguments, and by solemnly asseverating my entire fidelity, that I induced him to yield.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863 by Various
So Ferondo returned to his hamlet, where all that saw him fleeing, as folk are wont to flee from spectacles of horror, he called them back, asseverating that he was risen from the tomb.
From The Decameron, Volume I by J. M. (James Macmullen) Rigg
Afterwards he ate the most astonishing dinner imaginable, loudly asseverating that he was as right as nine-pence and sick of slops.
From The Yeoman Adventurer by George W. Gough
Now they have uprisen, and, asseverating that classical education is a pricked bubble, ask boldly for expensive apparatus and a larger tract of space in the time-table.
From The Lighter Side of School Life by Ian Hay
She was there admonished to tell the whole truth, but persisted in asseverating that Sidonia had never learned from her how to make a love-drink.
From Sidonia, the Sorceress : the Supposed Destroyer of the Whole Reigning Ducal House of Pomerania — Volume 1 by Wilhelm Meinhold
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
