> I was set up for a laugh by the heading of the non-capitalised text,"WITNESSETH". It's not in either of my dictionaries, and www.dictionary.com has no entries. Good fun, but it leads to some interesting questions. If a legal document contains a made-up word without definition can it have a legal meaning?
Michael, "witnesseth" it's not a made-up word, it's old English for "witnesses" (which is why it's not in dictionary.com). Goes along with "thou", "thine", "doeth", "heareth, "seeth", etc.
Just FYI,
Well, over lunch I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary (you know, the _BIG_ one) at the staff club. "Witnesseth" is not there per se, but "-eth" is there as a general appendage for forcing a verb into the second person future perfect ...well, I don't remember exactly, maybe it was pluperfect or slightly imperfect! I interpreted "witnesseth:" to mean both "You will be attesting to the following" and "Give up hope all who read past this point" ;-)
-- Michael J. Lew
Senior Lecturer Department of Pharmacology The University of Melbourne Parkville 3010 Victoria Australia
Phone +613 8344 8304
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