Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A person who has heard someone or something and can bear witness to the fact.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who is able to give testimony to a fact from his own hearing.
- noun A mediate witness; one who testifies to what he has received upon the testimony of others.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A witness by means of his ears; one who is within hearing and does hear; a hearer.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
witness who givesevidence of what he or she hasheard .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The guy can't hear the difference between "Mansoor" and "Monsoor", and we're supposed to trust him as an earwitness?
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An earwitness reports hearing each brother say that the fryer should be moved to him, to them, to him and seconds later flames engulfed the building.
News Round Up Push Jelly 2008
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An earwitness reports hearing each brother say that the fryer should be moved to him, to them, to him and seconds later flames engulfed the building.
Archive 2008-07-01 Push Jelly 2008
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Our cubehouse still rocks as earwitness to the thunder of his arafatas but we hear also through successive ages that shebby choruysh of unkalified muzzlenimiissilehims that would blackguardise the whitestone ever hurtleturtled out of heaven.
Finnegans Wake 2006
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BROSNAN: ... which was corroborated by an independent earwitness, OK ...
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Lauren Conrad and boyfriend Kyle Howard were whipping themselves into a frenzy Thursday night at Deluxe, where we just happened to be an earwitness.
RadarOnline.com 2009
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Typicality effects on memory for voice: Implications for earwitness testimony
Slate Magazine 2009
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"presbyter" who finds it sufficient to use such an honorary title without qualification as his proper name, and was likewise an eye - and earwitness of the incidents of the Saviour's life, can be none other than the Presbyter John mentioned by Papias, who can in turn be none other than John the Apostle (cf. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, SAINT).
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent 1840-1916 1913
tarigwaemir commented on the word earwitness
From Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: "two young couples merrily swapping mates or a child shamming sleep to earwitness primal sonorities". (Not a neologism! First used in 1594, according to the annotation.)
September 30, 2008
dhuber commented on the word earwitness
Just heard a CNN correspondent use this word, pertaining to a potential shootout with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Watertown MA.
April 19, 2013