Other forms: declared, declaring, declares
To declare something is to say it openly and on the record, in a way nobody can later pretend not to have heard. A country declares war; a judge declares the trial over; at the airport you declare the two bottles of wine in your bag.
It is a formal verb and it keeps formal company. You declare that something is the case — he declared that he would never sell — or you declare a thing to be something, and the saying is what makes it so: the building was declared unsafe, the seat was declared vacant. Tax offices and customs use it constantly, so declare your income and declare your goods are the phrases to know, along with the green channel marked nothing to declare. The noun is declaration: a customs declaration, a declaration of independence. Do not reach for it at home — you tell your flatmate the milk has run out, you do not declare it.
1verbdeclareTo say something openly and officially.~20%
“The president declared a state of emergency.”
2verbnowTo state that something is now the case, so that saying it makes it true.~73%
“The court declared the contract void.”
3verbcustomsTo tell customs or the tax office what you are carrying or earning.~7%
“Passengers must declare cash over ten thousand euros.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 157 sentences found in the wild and placed 148 of them on a sense (9 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: announce
Latin clārus meant clear — bright, plain, easy to make out. Dēclārō was to make a thing clear, to bring it out where everyone could see it. To declare is still exactly that: you take something private and put it in the light.
Latin
dēclārō — to make clear
Old French
declarer
Middle English
declaren
English, today
declare
Built from
From Middle English declaren, from Old French declarer, from Latin dēclārō (“to make clear”), from dē- + clārus (“clear”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA