Definition of "plea"

plea

/pliː/

noun
plural pleas
1. An appeal, petition, urgent prayer or entreaty.
2. An excuse; an apology.
  Quotations
  Necessity, the tyrant’s plea.
  1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,
  No Plea must serve; ’tis cruelty to spare.
  1668, Sir John Denham, Poems and Translations with The Sophy, “The Sophy”, Actus Primus, Scena Segunda, page 6
3. That which is alleged or pleaded, in defense or in justification.
4. (law) That which is alleged by a party in support of his cause.
5. (law) An allegation of fact in a cause, as distinguished from a demurrer.
6. (law) The defendant’s answer to the plaintiff’s declaration and demand.
7. (law) A cause in court; a lawsuit; as, the Court of Common Pleas.
  Quotations
  they or any three of them shall be a Court and have cognizance of pleas real, personal, and mixed.
  1782, "An Act establishing a Supreme Judicial Court within the Commonwealth", quoted in The Constitutional History of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Frank Washburn Grinnell, 1917, page 434
verb
third-person singular simple present pleas, present participle pleaing, simple past and past participle pleaed
1. (chiefly England regional, Scotland) To plead; to argue.
  Quotations
  With my riches, my unhappiness was increased tenfold; and here, with another great acquisition of property, for which I had pleaed, and which I had gained in a dream, my miseries and difficulties were increasing.
  1824, James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Definition of "plea"

plea

noun

Quotations

Quotations

verb

Quotations