I cannot tell for certain if this dictionary has mistaken a specific textual instance of an obsolete historical spelling of "averring" (meaning to plea or affirm) in the context of, say, a naked beggar boy to be a whole distinct word for a general practice, but I'm laughing hysterically imagining the world where this happens so frequently we need a term for it
this reminds me of the time in school when we had "expedite" on our vocab list in English and of course most people looked it up and got "to speed up" or the like but the dictionary my friend used just stated flatly the original literal latin meaning, "to free one caught by the feet", and i have never seen a teacher look as baffled as ours did when he proved that he wasn't fucking with her
