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purport

UK/pəˈpɔːt/US/pɚˈpɔɹt/
verbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,247 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: purported, purporting, purports

To purport is to claim to be something, perhaps falsely. Purports to be official, a purported letter, purported to show.

The doubt is built in, which is why journalists and lawyers use it constantly about documents. As a noun with the stress moved forward, the purport of something is its general meaning.

Definitions of purport

  1. 1verbpurportTo claim to be something, perhaps falsely.C1

    “The email purports to come from your bank, but it's a scam.”

purport is a claiming.

Where it comes from

Anglo-Norman purporter means to convey or contain, from Latin pro plus portare, to carry.

  1. Old French

    porter — carry

  2. Latin

    pro — forth

  3. Anglo-Norman

    purporter

  4. Middle English

    purporten

  5. English, today

    purport

From Middle English purporten, from Anglo-Norman purporter and Old French porporter (“convey, contain, carry”), from pur-, from Latin pro (“forth”) + Old French porter (“carry”), from Latin portō (“carry”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

purport in the wild

  • The site focuses on major "digs" that purport to look beneath headlines to reveal facts overlooked or not reported by mainstream media.

    Truthdig

  • As a general rule, all offers are revocable at any time prior to acceptance, even those offers that purport to be irrevocable on their face.

    Firm offer

  • The introduction notes that the book "does not purport to be a biography of H.

    Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos

  • Hitchens suggested that the book does not purport to be a history of the relationship; it is rather, a series of "incisions, made at selected crucial points".

    Blood, Class, and Nostalgia

  • The term is principally applied to texts that purport to represent Buddhist teaching translated from Indian texts, but were written in East Asia.

    Chinese Buddhist apocrypha

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.