LAWSUIT

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does lawsuit mean? 

• LAWSUIT (noun)
  The noun LAWSUIT has 1 sense:

1. a comprehensive term for any proceeding in a court of law whereby an individual seeks a legal remedy

  Familiarity information: LAWSUIT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LAWSUIT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A comprehensive term for any proceeding in a court of law whereby an individual seeks a legal remedy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

case; causa; cause; lawsuit; suit

Context example:

the family brought suit against the landlord

Hypernyms ("lawsuit" is a kind of...):

legal proceeding; proceeding; proceedings ((law) the institution of a sequence of steps by which legal judgments are invoked)

Domain category:

jurisprudence; law (the collection of rules imposed by authority)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "lawsuit"):

civil suit (a lawsuit alleging violations of civil law by the defendant)

class-action suit; class action (a lawsuit brought by a representative member of a large group of people on behalf of all members of the group)

countersuit (a suit brought against someone who has sued you)

criminal suit (a lawsuit alleging violations of criminal law by the defendant)

moot (a hypothetical case that law students argue as an exercise)

bastardy proceeding; paternity suit (a lawsuit filed to determine the father of a child born out of wedlock (and to provide for the support of the child once paternity is determined))

 Context examples 

I understood, from something which the Colonel told us, that a lawsuit had been going on between you, Mr. Acton, and the Cunninghams.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There was a 1995 US Supreme Court case which was preceded by lawsuits on the part of timber companies, and by years of large protests by timber workers and their communities who feared job losses.

(Researchers find preserving spotted owl habitat may not require a tradeoff with wildfire risk after all, Wikinews)

Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes, or sodomy; for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy; and most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native countries, for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and therefore they were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in other places.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Well, they ought to be, but they’ve had a lawsuit for some years which has sucked the blood out of both of them, I fancy.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)