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Plea   /pli/   Listen
noun
Plea  n.  
1.
(Law) That which is alleged by a party in support of his cause; in a stricter sense, an allegation of fact in a cause, as distinguished from a demurrer; in a still more limited sense, and in modern practice, the defendant's answer to the plaintiff's declaration and demand. That which the plaintiff alleges in his declaration is answered and repelled or justified by the defendant's plea. In chancery practice, a plea is a special answer showing or relying upon one or more things as a cause why the suit should be either dismissed, delayed, or barred. In criminal practice, the plea is the defendant's formal answer to the indictment or information presented against him.
2.
(Law) A cause in court; a lawsuit; as, the Court of Common Pleas. See under Common. "The Supreme Judicial Court shall have cognizance of pleas real, personal, and mixed."
3.
That which is alleged or pleaded, in defense or in justification; an excuse; an apology. "Necessity, the tyrant's plea." "No plea must serve; 't is cruelty to spare."
4.
An urgent prayer or entreaty.
Pleas of the crown (Eng. Law), criminal actions.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plea" Quotes from Famous Books



... And when you are engaged in a siege; and want timber for the making of warlike engines, do not you render the land naked by cutting down trees that bear fruit, but spare them, as considering that they were made for the benefit of men; and that if they could speak, they would have a just plea against you, because, though they are not occasions of the war, they are unjustly treated, and suffer in it, and would, if they were able, remove themselves into another land. When you have beaten your enemies in battle, slay those that have fought against you; but preserve the others alive, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... animated by a curious bravery. In a nasal, plaintive voice she was singing the words of a ballad of love and of loving that London, as only London can, had made curiously its own that season. The insistence of her plea—for she sang as if she cried out her life's longing, sang as if she called on the passing crowd not for alms, but for understanding—made her for the moment, before she faded back into oblivion, an artist, voicing the heartache and the heartbreak ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of the church at Russell, and who had led the cry of "traitor" afterwards. He was a brave man, and the son of a bishop; but his excitable mind had been poisoned by the officials of the New Zealand Company, and now that death had interposed its extenuating plea, his offence could be forgiven. The archdeacon was permitted by the victorious Maoris to take the officer's eyeglass, and a lock of hair from his brow, for transmission to his English friends, and might well hope ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... ARAGON, fourth daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and wife of Henry VIII., her brother-in-law as widow of Arthur, from whom, and at whose instance, after 18 years of married life, and after giving birth to five children, she was divorced on the plea that, as she had been his brother's wife before, it was not lawful for him to have her; after her divorce she remained in the country, led an austere religious life, and died broken-hearted. The refusal ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... pretext for political shabbiness—never did he imagine that to leave a disgraced name as an inheritance to his children was a duty as a father" (Memoirs, vol. i. pp. xiii and xiv), and when Rogers urged this plea of family as a reason why he should accept the money, Moore said, "More mean things have been done in this world under the shelter of 'wife and children' than under any pretext worldly-mindedness can resort to." To which S.R. only said, "Well, your life may be ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott


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