allege

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• transitive verb To assert to be true; affirm.
• transitive verb To assert prior to a final determination.
• transitive verb To state (a plea or excuse, for example) in support or denial of a claim or accusation.
• transitive verb Archaic To bring forward as an authority.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To alleviate; lighten; mitigate; allay.
• To declare before a court; plead at law; hence, in general, to produce as an argument, plea, or excuse; cite or quote in confirmation: as, to allege exculpatory facts; to allege the authority of a court.
• To pronounce with positiveness; declare; affirm; assert: as, to allege a fact.
• Synonyms Adduce, Allege, Assign, etc. (see adduce), bring forward, aver, asseverate, maintain, say, insist, plead, produce, cite.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To bring forward with positiveness; to declare; to affirm; to assert.
• transitive verb Archaic To cite or quote.
• transitive verb To produce or urge as a reason, plea, or excuse.
• transitive verb obsolete To alleviate; to lighten, as a burden or a trouble.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• verb obsolete To lighten, diminish.
• verb obsolete, transitive To state under oath, to plead.
• verb archaic To cite or quote an author or his work for or against.
• verb transitive To adduce (something) as a reason, excuse, support etc.
• verb transitive To make a claim as justification or proof; to make an assertion without proof.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb report or maintain