pleading

Pluralpleadings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of plead.

   He stood at the gate, pleading for a second chance.

   Their endless pleading wore the landlord down at last.

   Note

   The verb form keeps every construction of plead itself: pleading for mercy, pleading ignorance as an excuse, pleading guilty with an adjective complement. Those patterns are the test against its look-alikes. Once the word takes a plural, as in a lawyer's pleadings, it has become the court document. Once it can be graded, as in more pleading, it is the adjective, as in a pleading look.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of making an earnest plea or emotional request.

   Her quiet pleading carried more weight than any angry demand.

   No amount of pleading could change the referee's decision.

   Similarbegging, entreaty, imploring, supplication

3. 3
   adjective

   Expressing an earnest, emotional appeal for something.

   The puppy fixed her with a pleading gaze until she shared her sandwich.

   He held out his hands in a pleading gesture, begging them to stay.

   Similarimploring, appealing

   Note

   An adjective drawn to the face and its signals: pleading eyes in Ann Lindsay's translation of Zola's Earth, a pleading look in Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins. Spurgeon turns it inward with a pleading heart, the posture of prayer rather than of a glance. It is gradable, as in more pleading and most pleading, so a look can grow more pleading as hope fades.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A document filed in a lawsuit, especially one that begins litigation or responds to its initiation.

   The plaintiff's pleading set out three separate causes of action.

   Opposing counsel moved to strike the pleading as legally insufficient.

   Similarfiling, submission

   Note

   Court procedure's term for the papers that frame a dispute. A complaint opens the case, and an answer or counterclaim responds. Together they set out what each side claims or denies. Lawyers often speak of the pleadings, in the plural, for the whole set. Keep it apart from the act of entreaty: Thomas Hardy's lover is whetted to pleadings too, but his are appeals, not filings.

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