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jury

nounverbadjectivecommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈd͡ʒʊəɹi//
  • United Kingdom//ˈd͡ʒɔːɹi//
  • United States//ˈd͡ʒʊɹi//
  • United States//ˈd͡ʒɝ.i//
  • Scotland//ˈd͡ʒʉːɹi//

A group of individuals chosen from the general population to hear and decide a case in a court of law.

noun

  1. 1

    A group of individuals chosen from the general population to hear and decide a case in a court of law.

  2. 2

    A group of judges in a competition.

  3. 3

    slangThe audience attending the first night of a performance, whose reaction may determine whether it succeeds or fails.

    The jury which decides on the first night usually seals the fate of the season.

Etymology

From Middle English jure, from Anglo-Norman juree, from Medieval Latin iūrāta, from Latin iūrō (“to swear or take an oath”).

verb

  1. 1

    To judge by means of a jury.

adjective

  1. 1

    For temporary use; applied to a temporary contrivance.

    jury mast

    jury rudder

    For the following two days all went well with us, save that the ship continued to make water so freely as to necessitate the use of the pumps at the middle and end of every watch, a fair breeze driving us along under our jury-canvas at the rate of five to six knots per hour.

Etymology

Early 1600s, of uncertain origin. Perhaps ultimately from Old French ajurie, from Latin adiūtō. Alternatively, perhaps ultimately from Frankish *garu (“ready, prepared”), related to Middle English yore, ȝare, from Old English ġeoro, ġearu (“ready, prompt, prepared, quick”), related to gear.

Forms

plural
juries
past tense
juried
past participle
juried
present participle
jurying
third person singular
juries
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).