Library / English Dictionary

AVOW

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Admit openly and bluntly; make no bones about

Synonyms:

avouch; avow

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "avow" is one way to...):

acknowledge; admit (declare to be true or admit the existence or reality or truth of)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Antonym:

disavow (refuse to acknowledge; disclaim knowledge of; responsibility for, or association with)

Derivation:

avower (someone who admits or acknowledges openly and boldly)

Sense 2

Meaning:

To declare or affirm solemnly and formally as true

Example:

Before God I swear I am innocent

Synonyms:

affirm; assert; aver; avow; swan; swear; verify

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "avow" is one way to...):

declare (state emphatically and authoritatively)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "avow"):

hold (assert or affirm)

claim; take (lay claim to; as of an idea)

attest (authenticate, affirm to be true, genuine, or correct, as in an official capacity)

declare (state firmly)

protest (affirm or avow formally or solemnly)

assure; tell (inform positively and with certainty and confidence)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Sentence example:

They avow that there was a traffic accident

Derivation:

avowal (a statement asserting the existence or the truth of something)

avower (someone who claims to speak the truth)

Credits

 Context examples: 

In answer to which I assured his honour, that in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

For some time I was lost in conjecture as to the cause of this, but yesterday an idea struck me, and if it is well founded, I conjure you to avow it.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Whispers reach me of Miss Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn't stare so, and having avowed a preference for Master Jones—for Jones! a boy of no merit whatever!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

For although few men will avow their desires of being immortal, upon such hard conditions, yet in the two kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi and Japan, he observed that every man desired to put off death some time longer, let it approach ever so late: and he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he were incited by the extremity of grief or torture.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, and, when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she said: In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But I loved her: and now it even became some consolation to me, vaguely to conceive a distant day when I might blamelessly avow it; when all this should be over; when I could say Agnes, so it was when I came home; and now I am old, and I never have loved since!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed contempt for that of their neighbour; yet our emperor, standing upon the advantage he had got by the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to deliver their credentials, and make their speech, in the Lilliputian tongue.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)