Definition
PLU has two distinct legal and quasi-legal meanings depending on context and era.
1. (Historical English law) An archaic contracted form of PLEYNTYFE (plaintiff). Appearing in early Norman French legal texts, PLU denoted the complaining party in a judicial proceeding — the person who initiated the action and sought relief. The term reflects the Norman French orthographic conventions of medieval English law, where "pleint-" roots carried the meaning of complaint or grievance.
2. (Modern commercial and real estate practice) An abbreviation for Price Lookup. In retail commerce, construction contracting, and real estate contexts, a PLU code is a numerical identifier assigned to a product or line item used to retrieve pricing from a schedule or database. In construction and procurement contracts, PLU codes appear in unit price schedules, cost-plus billing exhibits, and material take-off sheets as the mechanism by which individual items are identified and priced.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "PLU" functions as an initialism for two common phrases: (1) "people like us," a sociological or colloquial expression denoting in-group membership; and (2) "price lookup," referring to a numeric code used in retail and commercial settings to identify and price products.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not recorded. The abbreviation was not in standard use as a standalone term in this period.
The gap matters for researchers: the sociological sense ("people like us") has no legal application and can be ignored entirely. The "price lookup" sense, however, has migrated into legally operative documents — construction contracts, procurement schedules, and billing exhibits — where a PLU code functions as a reference term with contractual consequences. Misreading a PLU reference in a contract exhibit as mere administrative shorthand rather than a binding pricing identifier is a research trap.
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Common Confusion
Researchers encountering PLU in pre-modern legal sources should not assume the modern commercial meaning. In Burrill and comparable historical dictionaries, PLU is a scribal or typographic fragment of PLEYNTYFE, not a standalone abbreviation. The two meanings are separated by centuries and occupy entirely different documentary contexts. Cross-era confusion is the primary hazard here.
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Why It Matters in Research
For researchers working in historical English law sources: PLU appearing in Norman French legal text is almost certainly a contracted form of pleyntyfe (plaintiff) or a related form of the "pleint-" root. Burrill's entry confirms this usage. Researchers consulting Britton, Bracton, or similar early common law compilations may encounter variant spellings — PLEYNTIF, PLEYNTYFE, PLU — all pointing to the plaintiff role. Do not mistake these fragments for an independent legal concept; they are orthographic variations, not distinct terms of art.
For researchers working in modern real estate, construction, or procurement documents: PLU as a price lookup code appears in unit price contracts, cost-plus agreements, and schedule-of-values exhibits. Its legal significance lies in what the referenced price schedule says — the PLU code is the key that unlocks the operative pricing term. Disputes over whether a particular line item was properly coded, coded to the correct schedule version, or omitted from the PLU table entirely can become central to contract interpretation and damages calculations. Researchers should treat PLU references in exhibits as substantively important, not administrative.
The Law Mind corpus may contain both uses across different collections. Always establish temporal and documentary context before interpreting PLU.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the only shelf source that addresses PLU, and it does so narrowly: as a contracted historical form of "plaintiff" drawn from Norman French legal usage. Burrill quotes Britton directly — "Nul jugement ne se poit faire de meyns que de iii persones, cest-asaver, de un juge, de un pleyntyfe, et de un defendaunt" — to illustrate the plaintiff requirement in a valid judicial proceeding. The entry treats PLU as a fragment or shorthand of that form.
No shelf source addresses the modern commercial abbreviation, which is a product of twentieth-century retail and procurement practice and postdates the historical dictionaries entirely. Researchers should not expect historical dictionary support for the price-lookup sense; it falls outside the scope of those works by definition.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Construction Contract Pricing — Fixed-Price, Cost-Plus, GMP, and Unit Price (Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia). Relevant for understanding the contractual contexts in which PLU codes appear as pricing reference tools in unit price and cost-plus arrangements.
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