warrant

Pluralwarrants

Formswarrants, warranting, warranted

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A judicial document authorizing an officer to carry out a search, seizure, arrest, or the execution of a judgment.

   Detectives obtained a warrant to search the suspect's apartment.

   The court issued a warrant for the defendant's arrest after she missed the hearing.

   Similarwrit, order

   Note

   Courts issue warrants and officers execute them. The phrase is built in two ways: an arrest warrant, or a warrant for someone’s arrest. Procedure can turn on the document itself. A 1913 report in The North-China Herald records a plea for release because there was “no warrant issued by the Court and no counter-signature.” The same pattern runs through the “authorize” verb: an officer is warranted to search.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To serve as sufficient reason for; to justify or call for some action or response.

   The evidence does not warrant such a serious accusation.

   These symptoms warrant a closer examination by a specialist.

   Similarjustify, merit, deserve, require, necessitate

   Note

   Circumstances do the warranting here: evidence, symptoms, traffic, public pressure. The object is the action or response that is justified, such as the use of force, a review or a second track, not a person. R. J. Sellick, writing in the Railway Magazine (1954), shows the typical negative: a tunnel built for two tracks, though “traffic has never warranted a second.”

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Authorization, approval, or sanction for an action, especially as granted by someone in a position of authority.

   The manager acted without warrant when she canceled the contract.

   Such drastic measures require clear warrant from senior leadership.

   Similarauthorization, sanction, approval, authority, permission

   Note

   Behind the whole family of meanings stands a Norman French word: Old Northern French warant, a northern variant of Old French guarant, whose senses already ran from “assurance” and “authorization” to “protector.” Here the authorizing strand survives. It works both ways in grammar: uncountable when someone acts without warrant, countable in a royal warrant, such as the one of 1660 that Gill Perry describes, which decreed that women would play female roles.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To grant someone the official sanction or authority needed to carry out a particular action.

   The charter warrants the council to levy local taxes.

   Only the board can warrant a manager to approve such spending.

   Similarauthorize, empower, entitle, permit, license

   Oppositeforbid, prohibit, bar

   Note

   Here a person receives the right to act, and the verb usually appears in the passive with an infinitive: “I am warranted to search these premises.” In Thomas Wright’s History of Scotland, commissioners are “not warranted to treat” except with noblemen named by the king. The one granting the authority is a charter, a board or a commission. When a circumstance is the subject instead, the meaning has shifted to the “justify” verb.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   Anything that serves to guarantee, prove, or confirm something, giving a person grounds for confidence in it.

   Her long experience was warrant enough of her competence.

   A signed contract serves as a warrant of both parties' intentions.

   Similarguarantee, proof, assurance, evidence

   Note

   Assurance that points at something usually takes for or of after it: a warrant for success, a warrant of authenticity. Letitia Elizabeth Landon asks in Francesca Carrara (1834) whether a lord will need “some warrant for the truth of this history.” Garry Wills, in Newsweek (1987), gives it an ironic turn: a man who “gives his failings as a warrant for his greatness.” It is evidence offered in support, not a formal proof.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To declare something to be true with confidence; in colloquial use, to feel strongly sure of it.

   I warrant you he will arrive before noon.

   She warranted that the report contained no errors.

   Similarassure, affirm, assert, declare, swear

   Oppositedeny

   Note

   The confident “I warrant” of conversation is almost always first person. It often comes tucked in as an aside, either “I warrant you” or “I’ll warrant” at the end of a sentence: “That tree is going to fall, I’ll warrant.” Walter Scott gives it to Chiffinch’s wife in Peveril of the Peak (1823). It voices the speaker’s certainty, not a promise anyone could enforce, and that separates it from the seller’s guarantee.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To guarantee that something is of a specified quality, value, or condition.

   The dealer warrants each car to be free of major defects.

   No honest jeweler will warrant a stone to be a real diamond before testing it.

   Similarguarantee, certify, assure

   Note

   Commerce keeps this verb alive, often in the passive with an infinitive: goods are warranted to last or to be sound. Marie Belloc Lowndes’s The Lodger (1913) has cheap red damask curtains that “might have been warranted to last another thirty years.” In the active voice the subject is the seller or maker, as in “the dealer warrants each car.” The promise itself is a warranty.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   An order serving as authorization, especially a voucher that authorizes the payment or receipt of money.

   The treasury issued a warrant authorizing the contractor's final payment.

   Each warrant must be countersigned before funds are released.

   Similarvoucher, order, authorization

9. 9
   nouncountable

   A security, usually issued together with another and lasting more than a year, that grants the right to buy further securities from the issuer.

   Investors exercised the warrant to buy additional shares below market price.

   The company issued bonds with a warrant attached to attract buyers.

   Note

   Finance uses the word for a right that comes attached to another security. Unlike an ordinary option, it is issued by the company whose securities it lets the holder buy. Chris O’Malley’s Bonds without Borders (2015) describes the first Eurobond offering, by Crédit National, which came with warrants to buy further bonds. Its price was quoted cum-warrant, meaning with the warrant still attached.

10. 10
    nouncountableabbreviationellipsis

    Ellipsis of warrant officer.

    The warrant briefed the platoon before deployment.

    Several warrants attended the promotion ceremony.

    Note

    A clipped title, used where the setting makes clear that a person is meant rather than a paper. David R. Welsh writes in 2006 of “preparing warrants for broader responsibility.” The full title, warrant officer, has also named an officer whose job was to execute warrants and other writs, so older texts may mean that instead. The rank takes its name from the certificate of appointment.

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