avow
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
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to state or affirm
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to admit openly
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rare law to justify or maintain (some action taken)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of avow
First recorded in 1200–50; Middle English avowen, from Old French avoue(r), from Latin advocāre; see advocate
Explanation
When you avow something, you say it openly for the whole world to hear. If you're a witness in a trial, you'll be asked to take an oath in which you'll avow that you'll tell the truth. A simple way to remember the meaning of avow is that it sounds and looks a whole lot like "a vow," to which it's closely related. At the end of almost every wedding, the couple takes their vows, in which they avow their commitment to each other. To take a vow is to avow the things that you say in that vow. Be sure that you mean what you say when you avow something, because people will hold you to it. And don't mutter or mumble. That's no way to avow something.
Vocabulary lists containing avow
Vocabulary from Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" (1918)
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They Called Us Enemy
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"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning
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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.
U.S. secretary of state John Quincy Adams, however, considered it “more candid as well as more dignified” for the new country “to avow our principles explicitly” than to allow the British to take the lead.
From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022
"Instead of trashing volunteerism as inherently elitist, why not avow and attest to its ongoing value as a vital part of necessary diversification and cultural change?"
From Fox News • Oct. 17, 2021
When offered an easy way out — would he at least avow that he hated the Germans? — he declined the invitation and answered only that he loved the French.
From New York Times • Jul. 21, 2020
It’s not uncommon for parents to want to keep their kids locked away from these devices, or to avow the blessings of the screenless life.
From Slate • Feb. 5, 2020
“I avow, Serjeant, we shall commit ourselves wholly to philosophy without a grain of intelligence intermixed.”
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
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.
