Perjury is lying under oath in court. Commit perjury, charged with perjury, a perjury trial.
It requires the lie to be deliberate and material to the case, so a mistaken answer is not perjury. In England and Wales it carries up to seven years, and prosecutions are rare because proving that somebody knew they were lying is hard. Note perjure, used reflexively — perjure yourself; and that the whole point of an oath is to create the offence, since a lie outside one is not a crime at all.
1nounperjuryLying under oath in court.
“The witness was charged with perjury after lying to the court.”
perjury is a crime of false swearing.
Latin perjurare is per- plus jurare, to swear — swearing falsely, where per carries the sense of doing something wrongly. Jury, juror and abjure come from the same swearing.
Latin
perjūrō — swear falsely
English, today
perjury
From Anglo-Norman - perjurie, from Latin perjūrō (“swear falsely”), from per- + jūrāre. Displaced native mānāþ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA