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declare

verbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//dɪˈklɛə//
  • United States//dɪˈklɛɚ//
  • United States//dəˈklɛɚ//

To assert or announce formally, officially, explicitly, or emphatically.

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo make clear, explain, interpret.

    Then answered Peter and sayd to him: declare unto us thys parable.

    To declare this a little, vve muſt aſſume, that the Surfaces of all ſuch Bodies, […] are exactly ſmooth only in a popular, or at moſt in a Phyſical ſenſe, but not in a ſtrict and rigid ſenſe.

  2. 2

    To assert or announce formally, officially, explicitly, or emphatically.

    He declared him innocent.

    declare bankruptcy

    declare victory

    declare war

  3. 3

    To inform government customs or taxation officials of goods one is importing or of income, expenses, or other circumstances affecting one's taxes.

    The prosecution has introduced evidence, including canceled checks, to show that the judge failed to declare part of his income.

  4. 4

    To show one's cards in order to score.

  5. 5

    For a constituency in an election to officially announce the result

    Houghton and Sunderland South was the first constituency to declare in the 2015 general election.

  6. 6

    The decision of the captain to let the bowling side bat in test cricket to save time without being all out.

    He declared at 689-7.

  7. 7

    To explicitly establish the existence of (a variable, function, etc.) without necessarily describing its content.

    The counter "i" was declared as an integer.

  8. 8

    slangTo declare war.

    France declared on me, I'm finished!

  9. 9

    To state that a thing shall happen or affirm a condition in the hopes of seeing it happen spiritually, in contrast to prayer which takes the form of a request.

    He prayed to God "please heal my sister", while she declared "I am healed in Jesus' name".

Etymology

From Middle English declaren, from Old French declarer, from Latin dēclārō (“to make clear”), from dē- + clārus (“clear”).

Forms

past tense
declared
past participle
declared
present participle
declaring
third person singular
declares
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).