PLAINTIFF

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does plaintiff mean? 

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

1. a person who brings an action in a court of law

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• PLAINTIFF (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who brings an action in a court of law

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

complainant; plaintiff

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

litigant; litigator ((law) a party to a lawsuit; someone involved in litigation)

Domain category:

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

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

petitioner; suer (someone who petitions a court for redress of a grievance or recovery of a right)

Antonym:

defendant (a person or institution against whom an action is brought in a court of law; the person being sued or accused)

 Context examples 

He said, it was common, when two Yahoos discovered such a stone in a field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both; which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance with our suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to undeceive him; since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable than many decrees among us; because the plaintiff and defendant there lost nothing beside the stone they contended for: whereas our courts of equity would never have dismissed the cause, while either of them had any thing left.

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