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say it: WIT-nuhs
witness is a noun and verb meaning "someone who sees an event and reports what happened". It carries 7 recorded senses.
a close observer; someone who looks at something (such as an exhibition of some kind)
“the spectators applauded the performance”
“television viewers”
“sky watchers discovered a new star”
(law) a person who attests to the genuineness of a document or signature by adding their own signature
law
(law) a person who testifies under oath in a court of law
law
be a witness to
“She witnessed the accident and had to testify in court”
perceive or be contemporaneous with
“We found Republicans winning the offices”
“You'll see a lot of cheating in this school”
“The 1960's saw the rebellion of the younger generation against established traditions”
“I want to see results”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for witness come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.