Definition
An archaic English legal term appearing in procedural contexts to mean the act of presenting or exhibiting a matter before a court — specifically, in the phrase "plaints shewed and not avowed," referring to claims or complaints formally presented but not subsequently affirmed or owned by the presenting party. The term is the gerund and present participle form of "shew," the older English spelling of "show," used in legal records to describe the formal act of bringing something before judicial notice.
In its narrow historical application, "shewing" appeared in formulas governing attachment proceedings — a party could be discharged from, or "quit of," an attachment in court where plaints had been shewed (presented) but not avowed (acknowledged or affirmed). In other words, the presenting party declined to stand behind the complaint, leaving the attachment without support.
The term is marked as obsolete in both editions of Black's Law Dictionary that record it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "shew," an archaic or dialectal spelling of "show." Carries no specialized meaning in modern ordinary English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Shew" was an accepted past tense and participial form of "show" in formal written English, appearing in the King James Bible and legal instruments through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow but precise: while ordinary English uses "shewing" simply to mean the act of showing or displaying something, the legal usage was a term of art embedded in attachment procedure — designating a formal presentment of a plaint before a court with specific procedural consequences tied to whether that plaint was subsequently avowed.
Common Confusion
"Shewing" should not be confused with related procedural concepts of "averment" or "allegation," which involve affirmative assertions of fact. A plaint shewed was a threshold act of presentment; avowal was the further step of standing behind it. The distinction matters when reading historical pleading records: the absence of avowal after a shewing was itself a procedurally significant event, not merely an omission.
Researchers may also encounter "shewing" in a broader non-technical sense throughout historical legal documents — simply meaning "showing" or "demonstrating" to the court — distinct from its narrow attachment-law usage.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a trap for historical corpus researchers. Its appearance in early English common law records, plea rolls, and procedural treatises before the nineteenth century is not rare, but its meaning shifts depending on context. In the narrow attachment-law formula, it carries technical weight. In the broader documentary record, it is simply the period spelling of "showing" and carries no independent legal significance.
Researchers working in Law Mind's historical materials should note: finding "shewing" in a pleading or court record does not automatically invoke the attachment-law formula. Context — particularly the presence of "avowed" or "not avowed" nearby — is the signal that the technical usage is at work.
Because both editions of Black's flag the term as obsolete without elaboration, researchers seeking the procedural mechanics behind the phrase "plaints shewed and not avowed" will need to look beyond these dictionary entries to historical works on English attachment practice. The dictionary entries themselves offer definition without context.
No modern American jurisdictional relevance.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) are in complete agreement — both carry identical, brief entries marking the term as obsolete English law. Neither edition expands on the procedural context, the courts in which the formula appeared, or the period of its active use. This uniformity reflects a term included for historical completeness rather than practical guidance.
What the historical dictionaries miss: neither edition connects "shewing" to the broader apparatus of English attachment practice, nor do they identify which courts — borough courts, local franchise courts, or common law courts — employed this formula. Researchers cannot determine from Black's alone whether the term appeared in royal courts or only in inferior jurisdictions. A fuller account would require consulting historical works on English civil procedure and local court practice from the medieval and early modern periods.
Jurisdictional Note
Purely a term of English law with no recognized American counterpart. Its appearance in American legal sources would be limited to quotations from, or discussions of, English procedural history.