"Witnesseth" is the third person, present tense, singular number. It has to be read as part of a sentence in the form:
"THIS INDENTURE" "BETWEEN" AB (of the first part) and CD (of the second part) "WITNESSETH THAT . . ." In other words the piece of paper (originally--or perhaps parchment) on which the document is written is witnessing that the parties have agreed to what follows. Bruce At 9:23PM +1100 3/10/04, Michael J. Lew wrote: >At 12:43 AM -0500 10/3/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> > 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" ;-) > -- Bruce Lewis Lewis & Collyer 160 John Street, Suite 401 Toronto, Ontario Canada M5V 2E5 (416) 598-4357 FAX (416) 598-1067 [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
