Juries

How to spell juries

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce juries

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does juries mean?

1. nounGroups of people sworn to hear evidence in court and deliver verdicts.
2. nounPanels of judges who assess entries in competitions, shows or contests.

Juries in a sentence

• Both juries reached their verdicts within a single afternoon.

• The festival appoints separate juries for film, music and photography.

• The courthouse has two rooms where juries deliberate in private.

• Both juries awarded top marks to the same young baker.

Where does juries come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the plural of jury, which English took from the Anglo-French juree in the 1300s, itself from the medieval Latin jurata, meaning 'a body of people sworn to give the truth'. The root is the Latin verb jurare, 'to swear an oath', built on jus, juris, meaning 'law' or 'right', so a juror is literally a sworn person. The same jus root gives English 'just', 'justice', 'perjury' and 'jurisdiction', a useful reminder that the word begins with j-u-r and not j-e-r. When the y ending is pluralised the spelling shifts to -ies, following the regular English pattern where a consonant plus y becomes -ies, exactly as in 'story' to 'stories'. The legal sense came first, but by the 1800s the word had widened to cover panels of judges at fairs, shows and competitions.

How the word is built

• jur- (from Latin jus, juris: law, oath)
• -y (noun, panel)
• -ies (plural)