Plaintiff

How to spell plaintiff

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce plaintiff

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does plaintiff mean?

1. nounThe person or party who brings a case against another in a court of law.

Plaintiff in a sentence

• The plaintiff is seeking damages for breach of contract.

• The judge ruled in favour of the plaintiff and ordered compensation.

Where does plaintiff come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the Anglo-French legal term plaintif, which originally meant 'complaining' or 'aggrieved' and was used as a noun for the party making a complaint in court. It traces back to the Old French plainte, meaning 'a complaint' or 'lamentation', which itself derives from the Latin planctus, a 'wailing' or 'beating of the breast in grief', from the verb plangere, meaning 'to lament' or literally 'to strike'. English adopted it in the 1300s through the French-speaking legal system of medieval England, where it settled into its narrow courtroom sense of the person who brings a lawsuit. Its very close relative is 'plaintive', the adjective meaning sorrowful, which shares exactly the same root; the two are constantly confused, and the giveaway is that the legal noun ends in -iff while the mournful adjective ends in -ive. Remembering that a plaintiff files a writ, both ending in the letter f sound, can help fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• plaint- (complaint, from Latin plangere: to lament)
• -iff (from Old French adjective ending -if)