witness

Formswitnesses, witnessing, witnessed

Pluralwitnesses

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To see or come to know something directly through your own experience.

   Thousands of people witness the festival's opening ceremony each year.

   He witnessed the company's slow collapse over a decade.

   Similarsee, observe, watch, experience

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person who sees an event or has personal knowledge of something.

   A witness to the robbery gave a detailed account to reporters.

   Investigators interviewed every witness at the scene.

   Similareyewitness, observer, onlooker, bystander

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A person called to give evidence in a court of law.

   The prosecution called its first witness on Monday morning.

   Defense lawyers cross-examined the key witness for hours.

   Note

   Courtroom usage is about role rather than sight. A witness here is called by one side, so English speaks of a witness for the prosecution or for the defense, and asks whether that witness seems credible. What such witnesses say becomes evidence, weighed alongside records and timings. Anyone who saw an event is an observer in the everyday sense, but only a summons turns them into this kind of witness.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A person called upon to observe an event or action (a wedding or the signing of a document) and confirm that it took place.

   The contract requires a witness to countersign each page.

   She served as a witness at her friend's wedding.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To observe the signing of a legal document and sign it yourself to confirm its authenticity.

   Two neighbors agreed to witness the will.

   She witnessed the contract and added her signature below his.

   Similarcountersign, attest, sign

   Note

   The verb behind the witness at a signing. To witness a bond, a deed or a will is to watch it signed and then sign it yourself. The object is the document, not the occasion, and your added signature is the whole point: it is what makes the act of witnessing count as proof.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   Testimony; the attestation of a fact or event.

   The historian relied on the witness of those who had survived the famine.

   They bore witness to the injustice they had seen.

   Similartestimony, evidence, attestation

   Note

   The abstract sense comes first, and the word's makeup shows why. Old English ġewitnes is wit plus -ness, a state of knowing, and its kin include Old High German gewiznessi, 'testimony'. Today it lives mostly in the phrase bear witness to, which reaches well beyond people: a grimy tenement facade can bear witness to the exhaust of passing cars. Because it is uncountable, it takes no plural.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   An indication that something is true or has happened.

   The scars on the land were a silent witness to the wildfire.

   Ancient coins found at the site are a witness to early trade.

   Similartestament, testimony, evidence, proof, sign

   Note

   Here the witness is a thing, not a person. In the King James Bible of 1611, Laban declares that a heap of stones and a pillar shall be witness, with no article, as if the stones could testify. Modern prose keeps the idea but adds the article and a preposition: ruins or scars stand as a silent witness to what happened.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To furnish proof of something; to show or demonstrate it.

   The crowded streets witness the festival's enduring popularity.

   His steady hands witnessed years of careful practice.

   Similarshow, demonstrate, prove, reveal

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To call upon someone or something as evidence in support of a statement.

   Defendants may witness heaven that they speak only the truth.

   He witnessed his companions that he had paid the debt in full.

   Similarinvoke

   Note

   A rhetorical imperative that opens a sentence. A writer makes a general claim, then produces the proof with a bare Witness and a noun phrase. Vicki M. Pino does exactly this in 1993, following a remark about depression with 'Witness the recent White House suicide.' The verb takes no subject and no ending in this use. It reads as pointed and slightly formal, a way of saying 'consider, as proof'.

   Prices can fall faster than anyone expects: witness last winter's crash.

   Good manners are not dead. Witness the queue outside the bakery every morning.

10. 10
    verbintransitive

    To share one's personal religious faith publicly; to testify about one's beliefs.

    Members of the church often witness door to door in the neighborhood.

    He stood on the steps and witnessed to the gathered crowd.

    Similartestify, evangelize, preach

    Note

    The evangelist's verb, and its grammar is the thing to watch. It takes no direct object: you witness to someone, meaning you share your faith with them, or witness for a cause or a God, speaking on its behalf. The preposition can even survive in the passive, as in 'the God witnessed to in the Hebrew Scriptures'. With a direct object, the verb slides back toward its everyday seeing sense.

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