Word.ws English Dictionary

accessary after the fact

accessary after the fact is the alternative spelling of accessory after the fact.

Meaning of accessory after the fact

Noun

accessory after the fact (plural accessories after the fact)

  1. An individual who assists someone who has committed a crime so as to protect them from legal prosecution.
    • […] some of that atrocious wickedness in Jones, […] might perhaps be derived from the encouragement he had received from this fellow, who […] had been what the law calls an accessary^([sic]) after the fact […]1749, Henry Fielding, chapter II, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book III

Forms of accessary after the fact

pluralaccessaries after the fact

Questions about accessary after the fact

What is accessary after the fact the alternative spelling of?
Accessary after the fact is the alternative spelling of accessory after the fact.

Words near accessary after the fact in the dictionary

  1. accessaries after the fact
  2. accessaries before the fact
  3. accessarily
  4. accessariness
  5. accessary
  6. accessary after the fact
  7. accessary before the fact
  8. accessaryship
  9. accessed
  10. accesses
  11. accessibilities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: accessary after the fact (page history and authors); accessory after the fact (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “accessary after the fact.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/accessary_after_the_fact. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.