Other forms: sued, suing, sues
To sue somebody is to take them to court to claim money or force them to act. Sue for damages, threaten to sue, they were sued by three former staff.
It is the ordinary word for starting a civil case, as against prosecute, which is what the state does in a criminal one. The pattern is sue somebody for something: sue for damages, sue for libel. There is a formal older sense meaning to plead — sue for peace — which survives in diplomatic and historical writing. Note the noun lawsuit, and that suing is what a claimant does while the person sued is the defendant.
1verbsueTo take somebody to court to claim money or redress.
“She sued the company and won.”
synonyms: take legal action, litigate
2verbaskTo ask for something formally, in older use.
“They sued for peace after a single winter.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
sue is a legal action.
Old French sivre meant to follow, from Latin sequi — the same verb behind sequence, pursue and consequence. To sue somebody was originally to follow them, in the sense of pursuing a claim, and a lawsuit is literally a following.
Proto-Indo-European
*sekʷ-
Latin
sequi
Vulgar Latin
*sequere — to follow
Old French
sivre — to follow after
Anglo-Norman
suer
Middle English
seuen
English, today
sue
From Middle English seuen, sewen, siwen, borrowed from Anglo-Norman suer, siwer et al. and Old French sivre (“to follow after”) (modern French suivre), from Vulgar Latin sequere (“to follow”), from Latin sequi. Cognate with Italian seguire and Spanish seguir. a doublet of segue. Related to suit.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA