Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to affirm emphatically and without qualification.

1876		Record Argus (Greenville, PA) 1 Apr. 6/2: A stroing rear guard was put under command of Major Swear-’em-blind.
1892		Wrexham Advertiser 17 Dec. 6/2: If anyone should come down, swear blind I ghave you nothing.
1923		Morn. Post (Camden, NJ) 15 May 8/2: She wasn’t satisfied till she’d made me swear blind that I’d not read it.
1938		J. Curtis They Drive by Night 154: Have a drink first, they’d be bound to hold him for hours questioning. No, if he had a wet they were stone ginger to smell it and swear blind he was drunk and that he’d killed her in a fight.
1942		Tampa Times (FL) 9 June 4/4: He has to swear blind that he will vote for a man whom he knows to be unfit for office.
1959		A. Sillitoe ‘The Disgrace of Jim Scarfedale’ Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1960) 131: All his worries were over, he’d swear blind they were.
1989		Age (Melbourne) 28 Nov. 18/8: ‘I swear blind that [...] the leader of the Opposition would not have known what the term meant’.
1997		Rutland Dly Herald (VT) 27 July 41/4: The British say ‘swear blind’ with [...] no connotation of obliviousness or deception.
1999		Indep. 19 July 19: The banks swear blind that they are, or soon will be, Year 2000 compliant.
2001		Guardian 12 Apr. 33/2: Oh yes, I’d swear blind I’ve seen him.
2018		Gazette (Montreal, CA) 27 Apr. NP8/3: Trudeau and his deputies swear blind that Kinder Morgan must and shall be completed.

to accept as the truth, to have complete faith in.

1756		C. Lucas Essay on Waters Pt 3 138: [They] prescribe them to all patients, in what distemper soever, promiscuously; in some quantity, though it be but enough to swear by.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 9 May 22/1: The Town Clerk couldn’t stand us at any price; and yet all we had ever done to offend him was to canvass for fifteen solid days when the billet was vacant, in order to obtain the position for our girl’s brother, a promising young woolsorter, with more than enough education to swear by.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Dec. 22/3: I hear she has tried to lure Slap. from these parts, but he swears by Australian sunshine, and refuses to budge.

to give up, to abandon, to renounce.

1876		‘Dan de Quille’ Big Bonanza (1947) 102: When he recovered he ‘swore off’ drinking.
1884		C.F. Lummis letter 18 Nov. in Byrkit Letters from the Southwest (1989) 97: He had taken in two strangers [...] who tried to rob him, and he had ‘swore off’ on all such hospitality.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 14 Sept. 13/2: Victoria is afflicted just now with an epidemic of teetotal mayors. Ballarat, Bendigo and half-a-dozen other places possess mayors who have ‘sworn off,’ and whose little corner cupboards are bare of whisky.
1902		Ade Forty Modern Fables 160: He said he was going to swear off on making his Room a Hang-Out for Sharks.
1912		A. Bierce letter 5 Jan. in Pope Letters of Ambrose Bierce (1922) 183: As to pot-steaks, toddies, and the like, I shall simply swear off eating and drinking.
1924		P. Marks Plastic Age 231: You told me last week that you had sworn off poker. How come you’re playing again so soon?
1939		H. Miller Tropic of Capricorn (1964) 142: There had been others in the family who swore off, who went on the water wagon, as they used to say.
1946		D. Stivens Courtship of Uncle Henry 168: Metho Bill, the town’s fulltime drunk, swore off the drink and went on the waggon to make sure he would be sober for the match.

(orig. US) to make an elaborate or exaggerated oath, usu. in the face of another’s disbelief.

1843		Detroit Free Press (MI) 31 Oct. 2/1: Ye crawling, cringing, hypocrites, you will swear on a stack of Bibles that gen. Taylor is a free soil man, in the face and yes of contrary assertions of his neighbors!
1852		Wayne Co. Herald (Honesdale, PA) 26 Aug. 2/3: ‘No mortal in the County will believe otherwise, if the Whig [...] should swear upon a stack of Bibles to the contrary’.
1866		Wkly Democrat (Natchez, MS) 30 July 2/1: Becky [...] was will to swear upon a stack of bibles that she had never eaten [...] a fig in her life.
1878		Intelligencer (Anderson, SC) 23 May 1/3: ‘Why, sir, I will wade through mud as deep as two trees to get to the court room and swear on a stack of bibles as high as the house that you are just what I say you are’.
1884		Times (Philadelphia, PA) 30 Sept. 1/2: ‘I will swear on a stack of Bibles as high as this court room [...] that my father was not murdered by any of my brothers’.
1893		Buffalo Enquirer (NY) 20 July 1/3: ‘I will swear on a stack of Bibles as high as my head and on ten chairs that I am Chris. Schamber’.
1901		N.Y. Trib. 8 Dec. 9/4: ‘I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles as high as a house that I can’t-run-no-more-than-a-dog!’.
1909		DN III 378: Swear on a stack of Bibles (a mile high), [...] an exaggerated or emphatic form of oath.
1918		R.D. Paine Fighting Fleets 368: The chief gunner honestly believes he hit and disabled her and will swear to it on a stack of Bibles as high as the mainmast.
1926		in J.F. Dobie Rainbow in Morning (1965) 82: I would not believe him if he swore to it on a stack of Bibles as high as his head.
1934		(con. late 19C) E. Cunningham Triggernometry (1957) 375: We’ll go out and borrow a Bible – two Bibles – a dozen Bibles! And I’ll swear on all that stack.
1940		E. O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into Night II ii: I wouldn’t believe him if he swore on a stack of Bibles.
1951		E. Hill Territory 446: In the bush you ‘swear on a bag of boomerangs’.
1956		Billie Holiday Lady Sings the Blues (1973) 24: Mom [...] swore on a stack of Bibles I was eighteen.
1960		J. Havoc Early Havoc 75: ‘He swore on a stack of bibles that I had spots on my lungs’.
1966		‘Tom Pendleton’ Iron Orchard (1967) 183: I’d take a paralyzed oath to it on a forty-foot stack a’ Bibles!
1970		Tampa Trib. (FL) 13 July 20/2: ‘I swear on a stack of Bibles as high as my head I ain’t done nothin’ I’m ashamed of’.
1979		Morn. Call (Allentown, PA) 13 May 12/3: ‘Jpoey? Are you kidding? I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that high that kid has been nothing but good all his life’.
1986		Dly Rev. (Morgan City, LA) 25 July 2/3: ‘Remember when you were a kid and you were asked to “swear on a stack of Bibles”?’.
1996		Tennessean (Nashville, TN) 4 Nov. 13/1: ‘I could swear on a stack of Bibles that inside, we are almost exactly the same person’.
2002		(con. 1998–2000) J. Lerner You Got Nothing Coming 73: Swearing on one’s white skin is sacred to Kansas. Carried more credibility than swearing on a truckload of Bibles.
2011		Mason Valley News (Yerington, NV) 14 Oct. 9/4: I swear ona stack of Bibles.

(US black) a general interrogatory phr.

2000

Ebonics Primer at www.dolemite.com 🌐 swerta beef Definition: ‘For Real?’ ‘Is that the truth?’ Example: Swerta beef that happened yesterday?