OT: Witnesseth, was TSCC license

[Bruce Lewis]

"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, use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com 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
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