Other forms: pleas
A plea is the answer of guilty or not guilty given to a criminal charge. Enter a plea, change his plea, a guilty plea.
Plea bargaining is the American practice of agreeing a lesser charge in exchange for a guilty plea, and it settles the great majority of cases there. The other sense is an urgent emotional appeal: a plea for help, a plea for calm, ignore her pleas. Note plead, the verb; and that a plea in mitigation is the argument made after conviction about how severe the sentence should be.
1nounpleaThe answer given to a criminal charge.
“He changed his plea on the morning of the trial.”
2nounurgentAn urgent emotional appeal.
“The mother made a tearful plea for her missing son to come home.”
plea is an answer or appeal.
Old French plait meant a lawsuit or an agreement, from Latin placitum, meaning what has been decided — from placere, to please. A plea began as a settled decision and became the thing you say in the hope of getting one.
Old French
plait
Middle English
ple
English, today
plea
Built from
From Middle English ple, from Old French plait, plaid, from Medieval Latin placitum (“a decree, sentence, suit, plea, etc., Latin - an opinion, determination, prescription, order; literally, that which is pleasing, pleasure”), neuter of placitus, past participle of placere (“to please”). Cognate with Spanish pleito (“lawsuit, suit”). a doublet of placit. See also please, pleasure.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA