assize

American  

[uh-sahyz] / əˈsaɪz /

noun

1. Usually assizes a trial session, civil or criminal, held periodically in specific locations in England, usually by a judge of a superior court.

2. an edict, ordinance, or enactment made at a session of a legislative assembly.

3. an inquest before members of a jury or assessors; a judicial inquiry.

4. an action, writ, or verdict of an assize.

5. judgment.

   the last assize; the great assize.

6. a statute for the regulation and control of weights and measures or prices of general commodities in the market.

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assize British  

/ əˈsaɪz /

noun

1. 1. a sitting of a legislative assembly or administrative body

   2. an enactment or order of such an assembly

2. English history a trial or judicial inquest, the writ instituting such inquest, or the verdict

3. Scots law

   1. trial by jury

   2. another name for jury 1

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Etymology

Origin of assize

1250–1300; Middle English asise < Old French: a sitting, noun use of feminine of asis seated at (past participle of aseeir ), equivalent to a- a- ⁵ + -sis < Latin sēssum ( sed- stem of sedēre to sit ¹ + -tus past participle suffix)

Example Sentences

Divorce proceedings were fixed for 27 October 1936 at Ipswich assize court.

From The Guardian • Dec. 22, 2019

Last week an assize court jury in Kingston took only ten minutes to find Johnson not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.

From Time Magazine Archive

If ignorance would see its own degradation, would feel the incalculable depth of its abjectness, let it sometimes sit for instruction in an assize court.

From The History Of The Last Trial By Jury For Atheism In England A Fragment of Autobiography Submitted for the Perusal of Her Majesty's Attorney-General and the British Clergy by Holyoake, George Jacob

The result of the whole assize has been that out of the 2,316 stanzas 1,437 have been honorably acquitted; the rest have been italicised, bracketed, or both....

From The Nibelungenlied Revised Edition by Unknown

I said nothing, but I made a note of each, and have the complete record in a certain volume which will possibly be produced one day in a court of assize.

From A Master of Deception by Marsh, Richard