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Definition of "suborn" []

  • To induce (a person) to commit an unlawful or evil act. (verb-transitive)
  • Law To induce (a person) to commit perjury. (verb-transitive)
  • Law To procure (perjured testimony). (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "suborn" in a sentence
  • "The Latin word that gave us "suborn" in the early part of the 16th century is "subornare," which translates literally as "to secretly furnish or equip.""
  • "The solution was for the lender and the lender's agents to (1) instruct the borrower to report a certain income or even to fill out the application with false information, (2) suborn an appraiser to provide the necessary inflated market value, and (3) create fraudulent financial information that had at least minimal coherence."
  • "Big Music (aka Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music) and Hollywood (aka Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney) are now close to a year into their campaign to suborn various national governments, the aim being to turn them into copyright enforcement divisions, funded by local taxpayers."