Word of the Day

Tuesday August 18, 2009

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aver [uh-VUR]

transitive verb

1. To affirm with confidence; to declare in a positive manner, as in confidence of asserting the truth
2. (Law) To claim or verify; to offer to verify; to prove or justify

• The workaholic part is emphasised hugely. Both his daughters aver that Singh's dedication to work came before his family, but that they loved him all the more for it.
  "PM"s wife, daughters go public for their Man”, The Times of India, Apr. 23, 2009
• I love cliches more than life itself. As any Tory should. You can't be a Conservative without revelling in cliches. It's not just that we use them so often (referring to our senior colleagues as big beasts, thinking its somehow profound to aver that political life can be disrupted by "events, dear boy, events" and objecting to difficult decisions being nudged "into the long grass").
  Michael Gove, "Use your loaf: the flaccid slice is a horror", The Times, Apr 6, 2009
• Some aver that Pansy fell heiress to a sausage establishment and moved to Italy with her Poet. Still others maintain that Pansy, Gill the Grip and Maxy the Firebug never existed in real life - were merely the mind-children of a Symbolist and a dreamer of dreams.
  Wallace Irwin (1875-1959) An American writer. The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor (1908)

Origin of the Word

Aver, approximately 1380, derives from Old French averer "verify," from Medieval Latin adverare "make true, prove to be true," from Latin ad- "to" + verus "true".