Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To condescend to grant or bestow (something).
- transitive verb To condescend (to do something); deign.
- transitive verb To disclose or reveal.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To guarantee as safe; secure; assure.
- To permit, grant, or bestow: sometimes with implied condescension: as, not to vouchsafe an answer.
- To receive or accept by way of condescension.
- To permit; grant; condescend; deign; stoop.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To condescend; to deign; to yield; to descend or stoop.
- transitive verb To condescend to grant; to concede; to bestow.
- transitive verb obsolete To receive or accept in condescension.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To graciously give, to
condescendingly grant a right, benefit, outcome, etc.; todeign toacknowledge .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb grant in a condescending manner
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
Support
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Examples
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Spirit and word vouchsafe to bl/- ess and sanc/- tify these Thy gifts and creatures of Bread and Wine, that they may be unto us the Body and
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Because you, of all people on all worlds, and I use the term people loosely, and I grip the term worlds tightly, know that I will never vouchsafe or divulge.
Self-Destruction, Vol. 1 James Greer 2011
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Then Ajax, at his wits 'end, cries: Zeus, Father, yet save thou Achaia's sons from beneath the gloom,/And make clear day, and vouchsafe unto us with our eyes to see!
On the Sublime Hal Duncan 2010
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Releasing more bailout funds will require the International Monetary Fund and European institutions to vouchsafe that Greece has not fallen short of its privatization and austerity pledges and the IMF will have to maintain that Greece's mountainous debt burden is sustainable.
Move Buys Time for Greece, But Growing Debt Looms Stephen Fidler 2011
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I wondered as to where the assistant was located whose duty it was to take down whatever information I might loudly vouchsafe.
JOHNNY UPRIGHT 2010
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Why, one would almost think that the SPD had brutally murdered socialist leaders fifteen years earlier in a vain attempt to vouchsafe their own base of political power.
Matthew Yglesias » The Real German Resistance to Hitler: The Social Democrats 2009
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Then Ajax, at his wits 'end, cries: Zeus, Father, yet save thou Achaia's sons from beneath the gloom,/And make clear day, and vouchsafe unto us with our eyes to see!
Archive 2010-03-01 Hal Duncan 2010
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It was not sufficient, he thought, for government to protect our rights if it was to vouchsafe our pursuit of happiness.
America's Enduring Ideal Paul Ryan 2011
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But if Mr. Coleman is any indication, some GOP elites will dump this political slogan when a faculty member shows up to vouchsafe her new respect for their moderation and realism.
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Since then I've come to believe in Barack Obama even more strongly as I've watched him struggle to provide healthcare for tens of millions of American children, women and men at risk for bankruptcy, unrelieved suffering, even premature death because they lacked the healthcare protection that every civilized society should vouchsafe for its citizens.
The Moral Measure of Obama's Presidency Obery M. Hendricks 2010
cutlery commented on the word vouchsafe
"The doctor has his eccentricities & recounts them gladly for a dram of Portuguese pisco (never to excess), but I vouchsafe he is the only other gentleman on this latitude east of Sydney & west of Valparaiso" (Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, 005.3).
January 22, 2010
bilby commented on the word vouchsafe
I keep my coupons locked up in one of these.
January 22, 2010
cutlery commented on the word vouchsafe
one of those words that runneth over my cup
January 24, 2010