Other forms: summonses
A summons is an order to appear before a court. Issue a summons, serve a summons, ignore the summons.
It is singular despite the s, so it is a summons and the plural is summonses. Ignoring one is itself an offence in most systems, since the whole apparatus depends on people turning up. It also works as a verb: to summons somebody.
1nounsummonsAn order to appear before a court.
“She received a summons to appear in court as a witness next month.”
summons is an order.
Old French sumunce comes from Latin summonere, to remind privately — sub plus monere, to warn.
Proto-Indo-European
*men- (think)
Vulgar Latin
*summonsa
Old French
sumunce
Middle English
somouns — order or command to do something
English, today
summons
Built from
From Middle English somouns (“order or command to do something”), borrowed from Old French sumunce (modern semonce), from Vulgar Latin summonsa, a noun use of the feminine past participle of summoneo (“to summon”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA