Vouch

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈvaʊt͡ʃ/

Definitions

1. To give personal assurance about someone's reliability or honesty ; to present proof supporting a claim or statement
2. To assert confidence in someone's trustworthiness or truthfulness ; to show or supply evidence that confirms something said
3. To declare a person's integrity or confirm their truthfulness ; to back up an assertion by providing supporting information

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "vouch" is that its earliest English sense was legal and physical rather than personal: in medieval law, to vouch someone was to summon them into court to establish a warranty of title to land. Summoning a person to answer for a claim is the thread that runs through the word's history, and the modern sense of personally guaranteeing someone's character is a later extension of it. The word came into English from Anglo-Norman and Old French "voucher," itself descended from a Vulgar Latin form "*vocicāre," a frequentative of Latin "vocāre," meaning "to call." Its many older senses, such as calling, summoning, invoking, or denouncing, all grow from that basic idea of calling someone forth. The legal phrase "voucher to warranty" was a calque, a word-for-word borrowing, from Anglo-Norman and Old French "voucher a garant," where "garant" meant a guarantor. That legal usage gave English the idea of calling on someone to stand behind a claim, which is why "vouch" still means to stand as a guarantor for someone's word or conduct.

Synonyms: guarantee, affirm, assert, attest, certify

Antonyms: deny, disprove, refute, contradict, disavow