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False witness   /fɔls wˈɪtnəs/   Listen
False witness

noun
1.
A person who deliberately gives false testimony.  Synonym: perjurer.



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"False witness" Quotes from Famous Books



... them, nor serve them. 2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. 3. Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath day. 4. Honor thy father and thy mother. 5. Thou shalt not kill. 6. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 7. Thou shalt not steal. 8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. 10. Thou shalt not ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (of 4) • Anonymous

... devil: 'Father, ye do dishonor me. Say ye know him not, thy son, and suffer that a notable prisoner, his wife and child, were not called by thy name.' 'I will,' said I. But I deny all here. My soul is sorrowful unto death, as I bear false witness against them. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers is needed to uphold these privileges; and this array gives rise in its turn to a whole system of espionage, of false witness, of spies, of ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... "I cannot recant; in the first place, I would thereby recant many truths, and in the second place, I would commit perjury and give offence to pious souls. I stand at the judgment-seat of Christ, to whom I have appealed, knowing that He will judge every man, not according to false witness, but according to the truth and each one's deserts." Against the authority of men Hus asserted the authority of his conscience ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann

... worry her husband and her father both to death, and work things so she'd be a widow with plenty of money and a good house and as much farm land as she wanted, and a toll-gate where she could set all day and take toll and give back lies and false witness as change, she'd be ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... the head of the supreme court at Calcutta would impart a dignity to the proceedings, and give a fair colouring to the act. It was not difficult in India to obtain a conviction; for men who would perjure themselves by giving false witness were to be met with on every hand. A host of such were brought forward, therefore, with affidavits ready drawn in their hands, to testify against the victims. The result was certain: a partial judge ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Moses, formerly given to the Israelites, saith, 'Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness:' but Christ saith 'Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgement; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire:' and, 'if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... in search of George Farringdon's son, and Elisabeth stayed in England and cherished bitter thoughts in her heart concerning him. That imagination of hers—which was always prone to lead her astray—bore most terribly false witness against Christopher just then. It portrayed him as a hard, self-righteous man, ready to sacrifice the rest of mankind to the Moloch of what he considered to be his own particular duty and spiritual welfare, and utterly ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... false witness against thy neighbor. Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor's wife. Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox or his ass, or anything that is ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880

... remark about the truthfulness of the Indians appears to be Arrian's addition. It is not in the Fragment of Megasthenes from which Arrian copies, and the falsity of the remark is proved by the statement (ibid., p. 71) that 'a person convicted of bearing false witness suffers mutilation of his extremities'. But in Fragment XXVII from Strabo (op. cit., p. 70) Megasthenes says, 'Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem'; and in Fragment XXXIII (ibid., p. 85) he asserts that 'the ablest and moat trustworthy men' ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... words [Greek: kai tines syn autais] from St. Luke xxiv. 1. Their only plea is the testimony of [Symbol: Aleph]BCL and certain of the Latin copies,—a conjunction of authorities which, when they stand alone, we have already observed to bear invariably false witness. Indeed, before we proceed to examine the evidence, we discover that those four words of St. Luke are even required in this place. For St. Matthew (xxvii. 61), and St. Mark after him (xv. 47), had distinctly specified two women as witnesses ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... term. Just as the loss of word memories occasions inability to speak, so that of other sorts of memories occasions other functional disturbances. A patient may forget objects, and so not know how to use his penknife or to put on his shoes. He may forget events, and so give false witness as ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... This position is unsound and false in the light of reason. All civilized nations, as well as the Jews, have it written in their laws, "That the testimony of two men is true." The witnesses do not need to be inspired to be credible. "We receive the witness of men," although a "false witness will utter lies." No society can exist without practical recognition of the credibility of human testimony; and this is especially true of the "Church of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of the truth;" for, Third. In the light ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... she shall only be allowed to bear witness. A slave of either sex and a child shall be allowed to give evidence and to plead, but only in cases of murder; and they must produce sufficient sureties that they will certainly remain until the trial, in case they should be charged with false witness. And either of the parties in a cause may bring an accusation of perjury against witnesses, touching their evidence in whole or in part, if he asserts that such evidence has been given; but the accusation must be brought ...
— Laws • Plato

... purpose of drawing funds from the banks; and when Marcy backed up the young negro's bold statement by shipping on board Captain Beardsley's privateer, Hanson came to the sorrowful conclusion that it was not in his power to earn that reward. He was none too good to bear false witness against Mrs. Gray, but he was afraid to do it. Sailor Jack might come home some day, and—well, Hanson had never seen sailor Jack but he had been told that he was a good one to ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... must commit sin, and yet you admit, as you must, that there will be no sin in the body when it is dead. Where, then, does sin reside? Jesus answers this question once for all in Matthew 15:19, 20: 'For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.' It is the heart that sins; 'the soul that sinneth, it shall die,' says the prophet Ezekiel in Ezek. 18:4. The body will die and return to dust from whence it came, but these immortal souls ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry

... tricks. They stuck concealed pins into their bodies, and accused others of doing it—their contortions and trances were to a great extent mere shams—they lied without scruple—they bore false witness, and what in many, if not most, cases they knew was false witness, against not only those to whom they bore ill will but against the most virtuous and kindly women of the neighborhood; and if the religious delusion had ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... toll is levied on thought.) When weak consciences are driven by force to lie, deceive, and say otherwise than they believe in the heart, they burden themselves also with a heavy sin; for all the lies and false witness given by such weak consciences rest upon him who ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... maintenance of right and justice, and choose rather to take harm than to do wrong in any manner of matter. For surely if a man may—as indeed he may—have great comfort in the clearness of his conscience, who hath a false crime put upon him and by false witness proved upon him, and who is falsely punished and put to worldly shame and pain for it; a hundred times more comfort may he have in his heart who, where white is called black and right is called wrong, abideth by the truth and is persecuted ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... the poisonous weapon—the lie—out of the hands of our enemies. All we can do is to proclaim to all the world that our enemies are giving false witness against us. You, who know us, who with us have protected the most holy possessions of man, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... of the blind"; His soul abhorred their whole religious system. He characterized them as "whited sepulchres." He showed that it is the heart which defiles a man, "for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." "Blessed," says He, "are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "It was said to them of old thou shalt not kill;" but Christ equally prohibited anger, the cause of murder. He ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... had I but lost my earing corn And saved the cause once prized! O Saints, why such false witness had I borne When late ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... covet Mr. Sotheby's Muse, His Pegasus, nor anything that 's his; Thou shalt not bear false witness like 'the Blues' (There 's one, at least, is very fond of this); Thou shalt not write, in short, but what I choose: This is true criticism, and you may kiss— Exactly as ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... wrath, "Be not irritated at the absurdities your good squire has uttered, Sir Knight of the Rueful Countenance, for perhaps he did not utter them without cause, and from his good sense and Christian conscience it is not likely that he would bear false witness against anyone. We may therefore believe, without any hesitation, that since, as you say, sir knight, everything in this castle goes and is brought about by means of enchantment, Sancho, I say, may possibly have seen, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... slanderers—in ascending order of malignity. Similarly in the Commandments, where the worst sin of each sort is the one mentioned, we find false witness, or slander, named, in the Commandment which ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson

... bore false witness against his neighbour, a poor artisan, or (taking his own word for it) saved the nation from great disaster and ruin by putting out a fire that no ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... plays. Oh, what pain is to fulfil their appetites, And to accomplish their wanton delights! It is a wonder to see their dissembling, Their flattering countenance, their ingratitude, Inconstancy, false witness, feigned weeping: Their vain-glory, and how they can delude: Their foolishness, their jangling not mew'd: Their lecherous lust and vileness therefore: Witchcrafts and charms to make men to their lore: Their embalming[36] and their unshamefacedness: Their bawdry, their subtlety, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... are that infest the highway, So Mat may be killed, and his bones never found; False witness at court, and fierce tempests at sea, So Mat may yet chance to be ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... name—that all lately whispered rumors touching the trouble at which I have glanced are abominably false; and that whosoever repeats one of them, after this denial, will lie as wilfully and as foully as it is possible for any false witness to lie before heaven ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... The question is for me to let the court see whether I am an honest man or a false witness. It would seem that this has something to do with the case; the prisoner's life depends on it; the court cannot consider that ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... before Moses, and before this law was made, intimates that adultery is a heinous crime, yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges, Job xxxi. 9,11. The thief, sinning against the eighth commandment, was to be punished by restitution, Exod. xxii. 1, 15, &c. The false witness, sinning against the ninth commandment, was to be dealt withal as he would have had his brother dealt with, by the law of retaliation, Deut. xix. 16, to the end of the chapter, &c. Yea, the magistrate's punitive ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... not till Mr. Allworthy discovered that Blifil had been arranging with a lawyer to get the men who had arrested Jones to bear false witness, and learnt further that Tom Jones was his sister Bridget's child, and that on her death-bed Mrs. Blifil's message to her brother confessing the fact had been suppressed by her son, that his old feelings of affection ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... nor good name. The syxte, to do no fornycacyon actuall nor by no vnlefull[98] thought to desyre no fleshly delectacyon. The seuenthe (eighth), to stele nor depryue no mannes goodes by thefte. The ninth, not to bear false witness against thy neighbour. The tenth, not[99] to couete nor desyre no mannes goodes vnlefullye. Thou shalt not desyre thy neyghbours wyfe for thyne owne apetyte vnlaufully. And because this frere had preched this sermonde so often, one that had herde it before tolde the freres seruaunte, ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... Death by the Law, and legal testimony is not to be gainsaid; but I abhor those Iscariot-minded wretches, with faces like those who Torture the Saints in old Hangings, who cry, aha! against the sanctuaries, and trot about to bear false witness.[F] ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... faith) 940; il volto sciolto i pensieri stretti [It]. unfairness &c (dishonesty) 940; artfulness &c (cunning) 702; misstatement &c (error) 495. V. be false &c adj., be a liar &c 548; speak falsely &c adv.; tell a lie &c 546; lie, fib; lie like a trooper; swear false, forswear, perjure oneself, bear false witness. misstate, misquote, miscite^, misreport, misrepresent; belie, falsify, pervert, distort; put a false construction upon &c (misinterpret); prevaricate, equivocate, quibble; palter, palter to the understanding; repondre ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... accordant; if she was not beautiful, she was vivid, changeful, coloured, and pretty with a thousand various prettinesses; and her eyes, if they indeed rolled too consciously, yet rolled to purpose. They were her most attractive feature, yet they continually bore eloquent false witness to her thoughts; for while she herself, in the depths of her immature, unsoftened heart, was given altogether to man-like ambition and the desire of power, the eyes were by turns bold, inviting, fiery, melting, and artful, like the eyes of a rapacious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... exclaimed Agnes. "There must be a punishment deeper than any for the writers of anonymous letters. A murderer strikes the vital spot but once. Here every commandment is broken in the cowardly secret letter. False witness, the stab, illicit joy, covetousness, dishonor of father and mother, and defamation of God's image in the heart, are all committed ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... watch-chain on his waistcoat. He was reading a newspaper, and took no notice of them when they went in. Looking at his face Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man with such a face might steal, might murder, might bear false witness. But the face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at the same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier overtaking a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch this man's hair, to see ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... saying, Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 19 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, even God. 20 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor thy father and mother. 21 And he said, All these things have I observed from my youth up. 22 And when Jesus heard it, he said unto him, One thing thou lackest yet: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman



Words linked to "False witness" :   liar, bearing false witness, prevaricator



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