declaration

Noun

1. An emphatic or formal act of saying, telling or asserting something, by speech or writing; a decisive assertion or proclamation.
   • The weather was not tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their book, in spite of Marianne's declaration that the day would be lastingly fair […]. - 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility:
2. Specifically, a declaration of love.
   • I went to Miss Mills's, fraught with a declaration. - 1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield:
   • He blushed a great deal when the others chaffed him for his obvious preference. He made the first declaration in his life to Fräulein Hedwig, but unfortunately it was an accident […]. - 1915, W. Somerset Maugham,...
3. A list of items for various legal purposes, e.g. customs declaration.
4. The act or process of declaring.
5. The act, by the captain of a batting side, of declaring an innings closed.
6. In common law, the formal document specifying plaintiff's cause of action, including the facts necessary to sustain a proper cause of action, and to advise the defendant of the grounds upon which he is being sued.
7. The specification of an object, such as a variable or function, establishing its existence but not necessarily describing its contents.