ASSIZE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Assize

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noun

Assize n.

1.

An assembly of knights and other substantial men, with a bailiff or justice, in a certain place and at a certain time, for public business. (Obs.)

2.

(Law)

(a)

A special kind of jury or inquest.

(b)

A kind of writ or real action.

(c)

A verdict or finding of a jury upon such writ.

(d)

A statute or ordinance in general. Specifically: (1) A statute regulating the weight, measure, and proportions of ingredients and the price of articles sold in the market; as, the assize of bread and other provisions; (2) A statute fixing the standard of weights and measures.

(e)

Anything fixed or reduced to a certainty in point of time, number, quantity, quality, weight, measure, etc.; as, rent of assize. Note: (This term is not now used in England in the sense of a writ or real action, and seldom of a jury of any kind, but in Scotch practice it is still technically applied to the jury in criminal cases.)

(f)

A court, the sitting or session of a court, for the trial of processes, whether civil or criminal, by a judge and jury.

(g)

The periodical sessions of the judges of the superior courts in every county of England for the purpose of administering justice in the trial and determination of civil and criminal cases; usually in the plural.

(h)

The time or place of holding the court of assize; generally in the plural, assizes.

3.

Measure; dimension; size. (In this sense now corrupted into size) "An hundred cubits high by just assize." (Formerly written, as in French, assise)

verb

Assize v. t. (past & past part. assized; pres. part. assizing)

1.

To assess; to value; to rate. (Obs.)

2.

To fix the weight, measure, or price of, by an ordinance or regulation of authority. (Obs.)

See images of 'Assize'

Etymology of 'Assize'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Assize" Quotes from Famous Books

... Fell was not unimpressed by the bearing of the woman. He had some talk upon the matter with the Vicar of his parish, with whom he travelled home after the assize business was over. His evidence at the trial had not been very willingly given; he was not specially infected with the witch-finding mania, but he declared, then and afterwards, that he could not give any other account of the matter than that he had given, and that he could not possibly ...

— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... finally captured in Liverpool, and in the Spring Assize the three men were brought to trial. The jury found them guilty, but recommended Hickie to mercy on account of some supposed weakness of mind on his part. Sentence was, of course, pronounced with the usual solemnities. They were set apart to die; and when snug abed o' nights—for ...

— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... certainly dismissed a project, with which he had often played in South Africa, of erecting a public drinking-fountain on Mount Folly, as the citizens of Tregarrick call the slope in front of the County Assize Hall. ...

— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... At a Court of Assize and Generall Goale delivery held in Boston for the County of Suffolk aforesaid the Last Tuseday in October 1694, Annoq[ue] R[egi]s et Reginae Gulielmi ...

— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... doing away with the Norman method of trying cases by battle and the Saxon method of trying by oath, and by the machinery of the Norman Great Assize introduced again trial by jury. For this in itself is probably an old Saxon institution. And in 1164 came the great Constitutions of Clarendon, the principal object of which was to free the people from the church law ...

— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

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