Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun law A
plea made inopposition to another.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a plaintiff's reply to a defendant's plea
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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We cannot evade Philosophy by immoderately pleading our human frailty and the sharpness of pain: Philosophy is merely constrained to have recourse to her unanswerable counterplea: ‘Living in necessity is bad: but at least there is no necessity that you should go on doing so.’
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But his counterplea when it came was of a disconcerting briefness and potency.
The Collectors Frank Jewett Mather
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a criminal one, instituted to bring about the legal punishment of the guilty party, or one of certain other exceptional cases, he may, after hearing the cause of the summons, immediately enter a counterplea against the plaintiff before the same judge.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery 1840-1916 1913
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II, xii); also the forum of a counterplea (forum reconventionis sive reaccusationis), i.e. in a criminal suit the defendant can, on his side, accuse the plaintiff in the court of the judge before whom he himself is to be tried (c. ii, X, De mut. petit.,
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent 1840-1916 1913
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