proceedings
- 1The sequence of formal steps by which a legal action is pursued and resolved in court.
The proceedings against the company dragged on for several years.
Both parties agreed to settle before the proceedings reached trial.
Similarcase, litigation, action, lawsuit, suit
Note
A lawyer's plural with no singular in this use. It names the whole course of a case, so it takes a plural verb: the proceedings were adjourned. You bring proceedings against a person or for an offense. Christopher Rowe's 2010 translation of Plato's Euthyphro has someone taking out proceedings for homicide. A single legal step or action is a proceeding, which belongs to the ordinary count noun instead.
- 2The published record of a society's activities and of the business conducted at its meetings.
The conference proceedings were printed and distributed to all attending members.
She cited an article from the academy's proceedings in her thesis.
Similartransactions
Note
A publishing sense that is also plural-only. A single printed volume is still the proceedings of a society, never a proceeding. Its near-synonym is transactions, which names the same kind of record of what a society has done and discussed at its meetings. Both words treat the record as a sum of many acts, so in this use neither one has a singular.
- 3Plural of proceeding.
Multiple proceedings were underway in different jurisdictions at the same time.
The committee tracked all ongoing proceedings carefully.
Note
An ordinary count plural, so it can take a number: two proceedings, several proceedings. Through its singular it can mean events in general as well as steps in business or law. Phil McNulty's 2012 BBC Sport report speaks of proceedings in Poland and Ukraine, meaning simply what was happening there. Keep it apart from the legal course of action and the published record, which exist only in the plural.
proceedings is a form of proceeding
proceeding, noun: A legal action of any kind, especially one that is not a lawsuit. Full entry
- Forms
- proceedingproceedings plural
- Spelling
- proceeding → proceedings: add -s
Practice
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