bear witness
English
[edit]Verb
[edit]bear witness (third-person singular simple present bears witness, present participle bearing witness, simple past bore witness, past participle borne witness)
- To deliver a testimony, especially as witness
- He hesitated to bear witness against them in court for fear of reprisals by the felons' accomplices
- To prove, demonstrate
- The dubious state of the whole society bears witness of years of misrule
- 2017 July 7, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, “The ambitious War For The Planet Of The Apes ends up surrendering to formula”, in The Onion AV Club[1]:
- In stretches, this new Apes is an audacious, idiosyncratic piece of blockbuster filmmaking: a mix of Pixar, revenge Westerns, and Apocalypse Now, told almost entirely from the point-of-view of a posse of gun-toting, super-evolved apes as they roam the snowy Sierra Nevada foothills of the post-apocalyptic future, accompanied by a mute human girl, and bear witness to the strange cruelty of man.
- 1960 December, “Talking of Trains: The riding of B.R. coaches”, in Trains Illustrated, page 705:
- Nor, having married coach and bogie design successfully, does it follow that good riding will ensue, whatever the track carrying it—as the performance of B.R. standard coaches on flat-bottom, concrete-sleepered track bears witness.
Synonyms
[edit]- (deliver a testimony) testify
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]deliver testimony
| |||||||
