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arraignment

nounattested in dialogue

  • //əˈɹeɪnmənt//

The formal charging of a defendant with an offense; in many jurisdictions it includes their response in the form of a plea, typically as guilty, not guilty, or no contest.

noun

  1. 1

    The formal charging of a defendant with an offense; in many jurisdictions it includes their response in the form of a plea, typically as guilty, not guilty, or no contest.

    This process, Mr. Rothfeld said, could be interrupted at any moment if prosecutors in Los Angeles successfully extradite him for an arraignment on the sexual assault charges there.

    […]— the indictment will remain sealed until his expected arraignment on Tuesday, when the charges will be formally revealed.

Etymology

Etymology tree English arraign Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥tom Proto-Italic *-mentom Latin -mentum Old French -mentbor. Middle English -ment English -ment English arraignment From arraign + -ment.

Forms

plural
arraignments
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).