Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

subpoena

UK/sə(b)ˈpiː.nə/US/sə(b)ˈpi.nə/
nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,619 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: subpoenas

A subpoena is an order telling you that you must appear in court. Serve a subpoena, issue a subpoena, ignore a subpoena.

Ignoring one is contempt of court and can mean arrest, which is the whole force of the thing. There are two kinds: one to appear and one to produce documents. The name is Latin for under penalty — the opening words of the old writ.

Copy of the US District Court-ordered subpoena, made by the Science Education Resource Center (SERC), an office of Carleton College · Public domain

Definitions of subpoena

  1. 1nounsubpoenaA court order requiring attendance or documents.C1

    “The court issued a subpoena ordering the bank to hand over its records.”

subpoena is a court order.

Where it comes from

From Latin sub poena, under penalty, the opening words of the writ.

  1. Middle English

    sub pena

  2. English, today

    subpoena

From Middle English sub pena. The noun sense is derived from Late Middle English sub pena (“writ requiring defendant to appear in the Court of Chancery to answer a plaintiff’s claim or to be punished; writ requiring witness to appear in court”), from Latin - sub + poena, from the opening words of the writ. The verb sense is derived from the noun one.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Crime & Law

Practise this word

subpoena in the wild

  • A subpoena is a legal document that commands a person to appear at a proceeding.

    Witness

  • The term subpoena duces tecum is used in the United States, and some other common law jurisdictions such as South Africa and Canada.

    Subpoena duces tecum

  • However, unlike the latter summons, the subpoena duces tecum instructs the witness to bring in hand books, papers, or evidence for the court.

    Subpoena duces tecum

  • The use of the subpoena writ was gradually adopted over time by civil and criminal courts in England and the European continent.

    Subpoena ad testificandum

  • A Doe subpoena is a subpoena that seeks the identity of an unknown defendant to a lawsuit.

    Doe subpoena

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.