Avow

(=Affirm/Acknowledge? =to say, “I believe it”)

 

Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth.  —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

 

His father knew him, and avowed him for his son.  —Plutarch (1676)

 

As when fiends did miracles avow [i.e., even devils acknowledged the existence of miracles],

He stands confess'd e'en by the boastful Dutch.  —Dryden, Annus Mirabilis

 

 

   

 

Aver

(=Assert Belief In? = to say, “You should believe it”)

 

I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple.  —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

 

Love is a lordly feast, he writes, and I the same aver.  —Warner (1612)

 

I only shall aver what myself hath sometimes observed.  —Ray, Creation (1691)

 

What one author avers upon the subject, another denies.  —James, Louis XIV (1839)

 

How often do the Physitians lye, when they aver things good for sicknesses.  —Sidney, Defense of Poesy (1581)

 

They all averred I had killed the bird

That brought the fog and mist.  —Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her.
And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead.  —The Wizard of Oz