Other forms: witnesses, witnessed, witnessing
A witness is a person who saw something happen and can say what they saw. An eyewitness, a witness for the defence, call a witness.
It is also the person who signs a document to confirm a signature is genuine — will you witness this? — and that is a real legal role, not a formality. As a verb it means to see something happen, and it is more formal than see: we witnessed the whole thing. Note bear witness to, which is formal and often moral, and witness box, which is where a witness stands in a British court. Jehovah's Witnesses take the name from the religious sense of testifying.
1nounwitnessA person who saw something happen.
“Three witnesses gave the same account.”
synonyms: eyewitness, observer
2verbseeTo see something happen.
“She witnessed the crash from her window.”
3nounsignsA person who signs a document to confirm a signature.
“You will need a witness for the will.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
witness is a person who saw something.
Old English gewitnes meant knowledge or testimony, from witan, to know — the same root as wit, wise and the German wissen. A witness is a knower before they are a watcher, which is why the word can cover both seeing and swearing to it.
Proto-Indo-European
*weyd-
Old English
ġewitnes
Middle English
witnesse
English, today
witness
From Middle English witnesse, from Old English ġewitnes, equivalent to wit + -ness. Cognate with Middle Dutch wetenisse (“witness, testimony”), Old High German gewiznessi (“testimony”), Icelandic vitni (“witness”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA