swore
- 1Past tense of swear.
The witness swore to tell the truth before testifying.
He swore under his breath as the car refused to start.
Note
Every meaning of the verb uses this one past-tense form. The witness who swore an oath, the official who swore the witness, and the driver who swore at a dead engine all share it, so only context tells promising from cursing. In standard English it stays in the simple past. After have, the form switches to sworn, and the colloquial participle is what you get when it doesn't.
- 2Past participle of swear. Nonstandard; the usual past participle is sworn.
They've swore up and down that they locked the gate.
By then she had swore an oath she couldn't take back.
Note
A spoken-English participle with a long history. Samuel Butler rhymes "have swore" in Hudibras (1663), and Anthony Trollope writes in 1875 of having "swore off" smoking. Today it belongs to dialect and casual speech. Roberta Rogow gives "I'd have swore" to a character's voice in The Problem of the Surly Servant (2014). It suits dialogue that marks a speaker, while edited prose keeps to sworn.
swore is a form of swear
swear, verb: To express oneself by using rude words, profanity, or obscenities. Full entry
- Spelling
- swear → swore: irregular (no -ed)
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