Definition
In legal contexts, PET is an abbreviation for PETITION. It appears in legal citations, court records, case indexes, and docket notations as a shorthand reference to a formal written application submitted to a court or other authority requesting a specified judicial or administrative action. As a standalone abbreviation, PET carries no independent substantive meaning; its meaning is entirely derived from the underlying petition to which it refers.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An animal kept as a companion for pleasure rather than practical use; also, a person excessively loyal to a superior who receives preferential treatment; broadly, any cherished or indulged person or thing.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A cade lamb or any person or animal especially cherished and indulged; a fondling or darling; also, a slight fit of peevishness or fretfulness.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is absolute rather than merely partial. In legal documents and research sources, PET has no connection to animals, favoritism, or emotional attachment. It is purely a documentary abbreviation. A researcher encountering "PET" in a case index or docket entry should read it as PETITION without hesitation, not as a substantive legal term.
Common Confusion
PET as an abbreviation can be confused with other legal shorthand, particularly in older court records where abbreviations were not standardized. Researchers may encounter PET used interchangeably with PETN (petitioner) or PETS (petitions, plural) in indexes and digests. In patent law databases and administrative agency records, PET may also refer specifically to a petition for inter partes review or other administrative petition, which carries a more defined procedural meaning than a general court petition. Context — especially the nature of the court or tribunal — resolves most ambiguity.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of understanding PET as an abbreviation lies in navigating historical legal records, court indexes, docket books, and digests where compressed notation was the norm. In older English and American legal materials, clerks and reporters routinely used PET as a space-saving device in margin notes, case citations, and reference tables. Researchers working in equity records, chancery proceedings, and probate files will encounter it frequently.
A significant trap in historical sources is that the abbreviation PET may appear without any surrounding context to distinguish which court, which type of petition, or even which party is meant. In some older English sources, PET appears alongside other abbreviations in strings (e.g., "PET. in CH." for petition in chancery) that require knowledge of the full abbreviatory system of the period to decode correctly.
In modern electronic databases, PET as a search string presents an obvious false-hit problem. Searching for "pet" in full-text legal databases will return animal law cases, cruelty statutes, landlord-tenant disputes involving animals, and unrelated results at high volume. Researchers seeking petition-related materials should use PETITION as the search term rather than the abbreviation.
The Law Mind corpus likely contains PET most visibly in docket-style entries, case indexes, digest headings, and citation shorthand in older treatise footnotes. Cross-referencing to the full PETITION entry is always warranted.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary does not provide a direct entry for PET as an independent term. The source material associated with this entry in Burrill pertains to a neighboring entry (PERVISE), suggesting PET appeared in Burrill's text only incidentally — most likely as part of an abbreviation table or marginal notation rather than as a headword receiving substantive treatment. This is consistent with the term's nature: abbreviations of this type were typically catalogued in appendices or reference lists in historical legal dictionaries rather than defined at length as substantive terms.
The absence of a developed Burrill entry is itself informative. It suggests that PET was so universally understood among practitioners as shorthand for PETITION that dictionary compilers did not treat it as requiring explanation. Researchers should not read the thin historical dictionary record as indicating obscurity; rather, it reflects the abbreviation's transparency to its contemporary audience.
Jurisdictional Note
PET as an abbreviation for petition is consistent across common law jurisdictions, though the specific procedural context of any given petition varies significantly between American federal courts, state courts, and English courts. The abbreviation itself creates no jurisdictional distinction; the procedural rules governing the underlying petition do.