PLE

5 definitions found across Law Mind sources

PLEAuthored
The Law Mind • 807 words
Definition
Ple is an archaic Law French abbreviation and term with two distinct legal uses found in Old English law sources: 1. A plea or suit brought before a court. The phrase les ples le roy — the pleas of the crown — denoted criminal matters reserved to royal jurisdiction, distinguishing the king's judicial business from private or local proceedings. 2. A pleading; a formal statement made in the course of litigation. In this sense, ple functioned as the Law French root from which the modern English term plea directly descends. The term appears almost exclusively in medieval legal texts, Year Books, early treatises, and the glossaries that annotate them. It is not operative vocabulary in any modern legal system.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An abbreviation for purple, particularly as a hair color descriptor in informal contexts. Historical common usage: No relevant entry in Webster's 1913; the term did not pass into general English usage as a standalone word. Editorial note: There is no meaningful overlap between the modern informal abbreviation and the legal term. Researchers encountering ple in a legal source should treat it as Law French, not as a truncated English word.
Common Confusion
Ple is frequently misread or silently corrected to plea by editors of historical texts, which can obscure the Law French register of the original source. The two are cognates — ple is the Law French antecedent of the Middle and Modern English plea — but they are not identical: ple appears in untranslated or partially translated Law French passages, while plea belongs to anglicized legal discourse. A researcher who normalizes ple to plea without flagging it loses information about the linguistic layer of the source. Ple should also be distinguished from the unrelated Law French word ple (or plaie) meaning wound, which appears in coroner's inquest records and descriptions of bodily injury. Context disambiguates: ple in a procedural or jurisdictional passage means plea or suit; ple in a physical description of a body means wound or stroke.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal records — Year Books, plea rolls, coroner's inquests, Mirror of Justices, Britton, early Coke — will encounter ple in both of its Law French senses. Misidentifying the meaning based on surrounding context is a genuine hazard. The wound sense appears in coroner and eyre records; the plea/suit sense appears in jurisdictional and procedural texts. Neither maps cleanly onto modern terminology without interpretive care. The phrase les ples le roy is an important jurisdictional marker in the corpus. It signals matters of royal cognizance — the forerunner of what later developed into the category of pleas of the crown, covering serious criminal offenses tried before royal justices rather than local or feudal courts. Researchers tracing the development of criminal jurisdiction should note every instance of this phrase and its variants. Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not contain a standalone entry for ple. Burrill's Law Dictionary preserves the term in its glossary with illustrative quotation from Britton, making Burrill the more useful shelf source for this term. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier will miss the Law French layer entirely.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source of record here. Burrill gives two distinct Law French senses — wound and plea/suit — under the same headword, with quotation from Britton (c. 1) for the wound sense and from the Mirror of Justices and Coke's prefatory material for the plea sense. This dual-sense treatment is the most complete handling the historical dictionaries offer. Bouvier does not treat ple as a standalone term. The Bouvier materials in the present corpus touch on plea and pleading extensively under those anglicized headwords, but the Law French root is not foregrounded. This is consistent with Bouvier's general orientation toward practicing American lawyers rather than toward historical philology. Neither dictionary addresses the full jurisdictional significance of les ples le roy as a constitutional concept — the idea that certain pleas belonged exclusively to the crown. For that analysis, researchers need to move from the dictionary shelf to treatise sources: Bracton, Britton, and Coke's Institutes carry the substantive doctrine.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Pleas of the Crown; Plea (Criminal Procedure); Law French in English Legal Sources
Related Terms
Plea — direct English descendant and functional modern equivalent Pleas of the Crown — the jurisdictional category signaled by les ples le roy Plaie — Law French for wound; the sense of ple that appears in coroner's records Pleading — the broader procedural category to which the plea sense of ple belongs Crown — essential context for understanding royal jurisdiction in medieval English law Coroner — the officer whose records most often contain the wound sense of ple Year Books — primary corpus where ple appears in untranslated Law French passages
PLEmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
NEIF, NAIF, NATIVUS. In Old English Law. A woman who was born a villein, or a bond-woman.
PLEmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
An implied warranty may also re- sult from the usage of a particular trade; 2 Disney 482; 4 Taunt. 847. In a sale by description of goods not inspected by the buyer, there is an implied warranty that the goods are salable or merchantable; 24 Wisc. 508; 21 Ia. 508; 53 N. Y. 518;4 Camp. 144; 76 Ga. 629; 16 Or. 381; but see 23 Me. 212: and an express warranty of quality excludes any implied warranty that the articles sold are merchantable or fit for their intended use; 134 U. S. 306. It has been held that words of description consti- tute a warranty that the articles sold are of the quality and description so described; 11 Pick. 99; 3 Rawle 23; but the better opinion has been said to be that the words of description constitute not a warranty of the description, but a condition precedent to the seller's right of action, that the thing which he offers to deliver, or has de- livered, should answer the description; 4 M. & W. 39. Where the buyer relies on the seller's skill and judgment to supply him an article, there is an implied warranty that the article will suit the desired pur- pose; 2 M. & G. 279; Benj. Sales § 661. Finally, it is said that that there is always an implied warranty in sales of provisions for household use; 18 Pick. 57; 18 Mich. 51; 50 Barb. 116. But see Benj. Sales § 670. In the sale of commercial paper without indorsement or express assumption of lia- bility on the paper itself, the contract of sale and the obligations which arise from it as between vendor and vendee are gov erned by the common law relating to the sale of goods and chattels; and the un- doubted rule is that in such a sale the obli- gation of the vendor is not restricted to the mere question of forgery vel non, but depends on whether he has delivered that which he contracted to sell, this rule being designated in England as a condition of the principal contract, and in this country being generally termed an implied war- ranty of identity of the thing sold; 163 U. S. 385. The rule of the civil law was that a fair price implied a warranty of quality; Dig. 21. 2. 1. This rule has been adopted in Louisiana; 1 La. Ann. 27; and in South Carolina; 1 Bay 324. There may be an implied warranty as to character; 13 Mass. 139; 2 Harr. & G. 495; 20 Johns. 204; 4 B. & C. 108; and even as to quality, from statements of the seller; 40 Me. 9; 24 Barb. 549. See 2 Misc. Rep. 295. A purchaser may examine an article and exercise his judgment upon it, and at the same time protect himself by a war- ranty; 158 Mass. 178; but if he elects not to accept the property as not answering the warranty, there is no duty imposed upon either party thereafter to make fur- ther tests or experiments to see whether the property complies with the warranty; 9 U. S. App. 550. It is settled that in an executory agree- ment the vendor warrants, by implication, his title to the goods which he promises to sell, and that in the sale of an ascertained specific chattel, an affirmation by the vend- or that the chattel is his is equivalent to a warranty of title, and that this affirma- tion may be implied from his conduct as well as his words. It is further said that the present rule in England is, in the ab- sence of such implication or affirmation, that the sale of a personal chattel implies an affirmation by the vendor that the chat- tel is his, and, therefore, he warrants the title, unless it be shown by the facts and circumstances of the sale that the vendor did not intend to assert ownership, but only to transfer such interest as he might have in the chattel sold; Benj. Sales 627, 639. As to the goods in the possession of the vendor, there is an implied warranty of title; but where the goods sold are in pos- session of a third party at the time of the sale, then there is no such warranty: 36 Me. 501; 28 Miss. 772; 2 Kent 478; 8 Mont. 380; 25 Neb. 360; 39 Kan. 365; 47 Minn. 500; 122 Pa. 7; contra, 3 Term 58; 17 С. B. N. 8. 708. An implied warranty of quality exists ins cases of the sale of food provisions on grounds of public policy, but the exception is limited to sales for immediate consump- tion; 73 N. W. Rep. (Minn.) 163; 145 Mass. 439; 49 N. E. Rep. (III.) 210. See 18 N. Y.
PLEmain
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870
(303) old English law. A wound. Et puis vist le coroner, et les jurors ove luy, voer le cors, et les playes et les coupes; and then shall the coroner go, and the jurors with him, to view the body, and the wounds, and the strokes [or marks of blows.] Britt. c. 1. L. Fr. In old English law. A plea or suit. Les ples le roy; the pleas of the crown. Mirr. c. 4. 9 Co. pref. v. A plea, (pleading.) Ceo n'est ple; this is no plea. Yearb. T. 18 Hen. VI. 2. Le ple est double. H. 8 Hen. VI. 13. (304) to produce it with the least delay and confuPLEDER. L. Fr. In old English law. sion. Steph. Pl. 1. Id. 123-137, et per tot. To plead; to conduct an action. La forme In equity. The formal method of placet la manere de pleder parsonels plees pledaing the statements of the respective parties to a suit before the court; a less technical procedure than pleading at law, the substance of the statements being regarded rather than their precise verbal form. (305) to his hands, except assets to a certain amount, which are not sufficient to satisfy the plaintiff. 1 Tidd's Pr. 644. 2 Arch. Pr. 147. English practice. A pledge; a surety. administered all the assets that have come Mag. Cart. 9 Hen. III. c. 8. Pone per vadium et salvos plegios; put by gage and safe pledges. Bract. fol. 149 b. See Id. 336. Per plegios dimittere; to release on pledges or bail. Fleta, lib. 2, с. 52, § 40, et seq. Plegii de prosequendo; pledges to prosecute. Id. lib. 2, c. 62, § 2.
PLEadj
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
Abbreviation of purple (hair color).

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