Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A thing or set of things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment.
  • noun Something indicative; an indication or set of indications.
  • noun The means by which an allegation may be proven, such as oral testimony, documents, or physical objects.
  • noun The set of legal rules determining what testimony, documents, and objects may be admitted as proof in a trial.
  • transitive verb To indicate clearly; exemplify or prove.
  • idiom (in evidence) Plainly visible; to be seen.
  • idiom Law (in evidence) As legal evidence.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make evident or clear; show clearly; prove.
  • To attest or support by evidence or testimony; witness.
  • noun The state of being evident, clear, or plain, and not liable to doubt or question; evidentness; clearness; plainness; certitude. See mediate and immediate evidence, etc., below.
  • noun The means by which the existence or non-existence or the truth or falsehood of an alleged fact is ascertained or made evident; testimony; witness; hence, more generally, the facts upon which reasoning from effect to cause is based; that which makes evident or plain; the experiential premises of a proof.
  • noun Specifically, in law: A deed; an instrument or document by which a fact is made evident: as, evidences of title (that is, title-deeds); evidences of debt (that is, written obligations to pay money).
  • noun One who supplies testimony or proof; a witness: now used chiefly in the phrase “turning state's (or queen's) evidence.
  • noun Information, whether consisting of the testimony of witnesses or the contents of documents, or derived from inspection of objects, which tends, or is presented as tending, to make clear the fact in question in a legal investigation or trial; testimony: as, he offered evidence of good character.
  • noun In a more restricted sense, that part of such information or testimony which is properly receivable or has actually been received by the court on the trial of an issue: sometimes more specifically characterized as judicial evidence: as, that is not evidence, my lord; the age of the accused is not in evidence. In this latter sense sometimes, especially in equity practice, spoken of as the proofs.
  • noun The rules by which the reception of testimony is regulated in courts of justice: as, a treatise on evidence; professor of pleading and evidence.
  • noun Plainly visible; conspicuous: a recent phraseadopted from the French en evidence.
  • noun Testimony to having witnessed an act or event, as distinguished from negative evidence, or the testimony of a witness who was present and observant, that such act or event did not take place. As between equally credible witnesses, positive testimony is entitled to more weight than negative, because it may be that one witness, though present, did not see or hear that which another witness did.
  • noun Evidence sufficient not only to go to the jury, but to require them to find accordingly if no credible contrary evidence be given.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To render evident or clear; to prove; to evince.
  • noun That which makes evident or manifest; that which furnishes, or tends to furnish, proof; any mode of proof; the ground of belief or judgement
  • noun rare One who bears witness.
  • noun (Law) That which is legally submitted to competent tribunal, as a means of ascertaining the truth of any alleged matter of fact under investigation before it; means of making proof; -- the latter, strictly speaking, not being synonymous with evidence, but rather the effect of it.
  • noun See under Circumstantial, Conclusive, etc.
  • noun [Eng.] evidence for the crown, in English courts; equivalent to state's evidence in American courts.
  • noun [U. S. ] evidence for the government or the people.
  • noun to confess a crime and give evidence against one's accomplices.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Facts or observations presented in support of an assertion.
  • noun law Anything admitted by a court to prove or disprove alleged matters of fact in a trial.
  • verb transitive To provide evidence for, or suggest the truth of.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb give evidence
  • noun (law) all the means by which any alleged matter of fact whose truth is investigated at judicial trial is established or disproved
  • noun an indication that makes something evident
  • noun your basis for belief or disbelief; knowledge on which to base belief
  • verb provide evidence for; stand as proof of; show by one's behavior, attitude, or external attributes
  • verb provide evidence for

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin ēvidentia, from Latin ēvidēns, ēvident-, obvious; see evident.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin evidentia ("clearness, in Late Latin a proof"), from evidens ("clear, evident"); see evident.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word evidence.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.