0 a person who sees an event happening, especially a crime or an accident:
1 a person in a law court who says what they know about a legal case or a particular person:
A psychiatrist was called as an expert witness for the defence.
The key witness for the prosecution was offered police protection after she received death threats.
2 to see something happen, especially an accident or crime:
3 When a place or period witnesses a particular event, the event happens in that place or during that period:
Those years witnessed momentous changes throughout Europe.
This university has witnessed quite a few changes over the years.
4 to show or give proof of something:
5 a person who sees an event happening, esp. a crime or an accident:
The end of the millennium would witness the twilight of the social model and its institutional manifestation, the welfare state.
As the articles in this issue bear witness, such refined description of specific cases is already underway.
He refers, for example, to 'ethnographic witnessing ' which has a connotation of superiority associated with religion.
First, the re-opening of the site promises all the sensational imagery witnessed in the 1960s with improved archaeological technologies of the 1990s.
Witness the ways in which, in most countries, public discourse has accommodated environmental or feminist rhetoric without thereby losing its distinctive national character.
These committed essays, of course, bear witness to important issues, even if they do not always illuminate them.
Those that had witnessed a corrupt act also expressed more willingness to take part in political activism.
Cases and controls were similar on all demographic variables, school performance, number of attacks witnessed and psychopathology before the onset of the epidemic.
