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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
sworn
I.
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a sworn statement (=one that you officially promise is true)
▪ The reports were based on sworn statements of graduates of the terrorist training camp.
sworn enemies (=enemies who will always hate each other)
▪ The men have been sworn enemies for many years.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
sb could have sworn (that) ...
▪ All of which is very curious we could have sworn Colin Milburn went to good old Greencroft comprehensive.
▪ Athelstan could have sworn he was acting as if there was some one else there.
▪ Corbett could have sworn that momentarily he glimpsed another figure, shadow-like, but fled on.
▪ He could have sworn the pile of letters had been deeper, that there had been many more.
▪ No, he recalled other sightings, so real you could have sworn they were alive ... until they vanished.
▪ She could have sworn the light had been yellow - pure yellow.
▪ The friar could have sworn that Sir John was singing a hymn or a song under his breath.
▪ The Myrcans looked on with what he could have sworn was approval.
II.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
enemy
▪ More and more the sworn enemies of Tokugawa political power openly flouted Bakufu authority.
▪ This killer dressed like a popinjay, sweetly singing a madrigal to men he knew were his sworn enemies.
▪ In the Fifties they were sworn enemies.
▪ It is a strange sister party which wants to see Labour's sworn enemies back in power.
▪ One minute they were sworn enemies, the next they were clinging together in fierce mutual desire.
statement
▪ Years later her parents made a sworn statement testifying that the couple had met in July 1917.
▪ The reports were based on sworn statements of graduates of the camp, whose seven-month training including the use of explosives.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ For self-defence therefore the sworn foresters were allowed to carry bows and arrows in the forest.
▪ Forest wardens, verderers, regarders, foresters and sworn jurors made presentments before them of offences against vert and venison.
▪ In the Fifties they were sworn enemies.
▪ It is a strange sister party which wants to see Labour's sworn enemies back in power.
▪ More and more the sworn enemies of Tokugawa political power openly flouted Bakufu authority.
▪ She had done nothing criminal; she had merely broken a sworn promise.
▪ This killer dressed like a popinjay, sweetly singing a madrigal to men he knew were his sworn enemies.
▪ Years later her parents made a sworn statement testifying that the couple had met in July 1917.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sworn

Swear \Swear\, v. i. [imp. Swore, formerly Sware; p. p. Sworn; p. pr. & vb. n. Swearing.] [OE. swerien, AS. swerian; akin to D. zweren, OS. swerian, OHG. swerien, G. schw["o]ren, Icel. sverja, Sw. sv["a]rja, Dan. sv[ae]rge, Icel. & Sw. svara to answer, Dan. svare, Dan. & Sw. svar an answer, Goth. swaran to swear, and perhaps to E. swarm.

  1. To affirm or utter a solemn declaration, with an appeal to God for the truth of what is affirmed; to make a promise, threat, or resolve on oath; also, to affirm solemnly by some sacred object, or one regarded as sacred, as the Bible, the Koran, etc.

    Ye shall swear by my name falsely.
    --Lev. xix. 1

  2. I swear by all the Roman gods.
    --Shak.

    2. (Law) To give evidence on oath; as, to swear to the truth of a statement; he swore against the prisoner.

  3. To make an appeal to God in an irreverant manner; to use the name of God or sacred things profanely; to call upon God in imprecation; to curse.

    [I] swore little; diced not above seven times a week.
    --Shak.

    To swear by, to place great confidence in a person or thing; to trust implicitly as an authority. ``I simply meant to ask if you are one of those who swear by Lord Verulam.''
    --Miss Edgeworth.

    To swear off, to make a solemn vow, or a serious resolution, to abstain from something; as, to swear off smoking. [Slang]

Sworn

Sworn \Sworn\, p. p. of Swear.

Sworn brothers, originally, companions in arms who took an oath to share together good and bad fortune; hence, faithful friends.

Sworn enemies, determined or irreconcilable enemies.

Sworn friends, close friends.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
sworn

past participle of swear; sworn enemies, those who have taken a vow of mutual hatred, is from c.1600.

Wiktionary
sworn
  1. 1 Given under oath. 2 (rfdef: English) v

  2. (past participle of swear English)

WordNet
sworn
  1. adj. bound by or as if by an oath; "according to an early tradition became his sworn brother"; "sworn enemies" [syn: pledged]

  2. bound by or stated on oath; "now my sworn friend and then mine enemy"- Shakespeare [ant: unsworn]

sworn

See swear

swear
  1. v. utter obscenities or profanities; "The drunken men were cursing loudly in the street" [syn: curse, cuss, blaspheme, imprecate]

  2. to declare or affirm solemnly and formally as true; "Before God I swear I am innocent" [syn: affirm, verify, assert, avow, aver, swan]

  3. promise solemnly; take an oath

  4. make a deposition; declare under oath [syn: depose, depone]

  5. have confidence or faith in; "We can trust in God"; "Rely on your friends"; "bank on your good education"; "I swear by my grandmother's recipes" [syn: trust, rely, bank] [ant: distrust, distrust]

  6. [also: sworn, swore]

Wikipedia

Usage examples of "sworn".

It was a sworn affidavit by Hermann Graebe, the manager and engineer of a branch office in the Ukraine of a German construction firm.

And, worse, she had betrayed most melancholy signs of sourness and agedness as soon as he had sworn himself to her fast and fixed.

My self-esteem was so wounded by this, and by his impoliteness in not answering my letter, with which he could certainly find no fault, whatever his criticism of my translation might be, that I became the sworn enemy of the great Voltaire.

She and Ribela had broken the prohibition during the battle of Arneis, but they had been sworn before the emperor not to do it again.

He, attempting to force the sworn word of a warrior, knew naught of my presence till my left hand had taken him by the hair, forcing his head back exposing his throat to the point of my dagger.

I have sworn to sweep them away, man, woman, and child, and be avenged upon all their unclean and faithless race.

In another two hours they were back on the ship, and Batman had sworn that he was never dating another stewardess for as long as he lived.

An army sworn to a god bereft of its power was, as far as Itkovian was concerned, no different from any other band of mercenaries: a collection of misfits and a scattering of professional soldiers.

When Sahra and Bibi had sworn, and Rinatto as well, Balanji stood and delivered his own oath, a promise of wisdom, protection and reward.

Two newly sworn watchmen remain behind and almost at once Conrade and Borachio enter.

A mere accident, right when he was about to make a breakthrough on the dangerous Soviet work he had sworn never to repeat?

He was a Blackhail hammerman, a sworn warrior of eight seasons, celebrated for saving Arlec Byce on Bannen Field and holding the Ganmiddich roundhouse with a force of just eleven.

They were the children of Saint Camber, and he had sworn to them, and he could not refuse anything they asked.

So cruel a desertion seemed to me unnatural, and I came to the conclusion that the Inquisitors had sworn my death.

Pliny, inspired with as truly Roman horror of quackery as the elder Cato,--who declared that the Greek doctors had sworn to exterminate all barbarians, including the Romans, with their drugs, but is said to have physicked his own wife to death, notwithstanding,--Pliny says, in so many words, that the cerates and cataplasms, plasters, collyria, and antidotes, so abundant in his time, as in more recent days, were mere tricks to make money.