Word.ws English Dictionary

actus rei

actus rei is the plural of actus reus.

Meaning of actus reus

Noun

actus reus (plural actus rei)

  1. The act or acts constituting a criminal offense, as distinguished from the intentions or state of mind of the perpetrator (mens rea).
    • It is hornbook criminal law that criminal offenses are defined in terms of an actus reus (criminal act) and a mens rea (criminal mind).1989, James B. Jacobs, Drunk Driving: An American Dilemma, University of Chicago Press, page 65

Origin of actus rei

First attested in 1970; from the Latin āctūs (“acts”, the nominative plural form of āctus, “act”) + reī (the masculine nominative plural form of reus, “guilty”).

Questions about actus rei

What is actus rei the plural of?
Actus rei is the plural of actus reus.

Words near actus rei in the dictionary

  1. actuosity
  2. actuous
  3. acture
  4. acturience
  5. actus
  6. actus rei
  7. actus reus
  8. actynolite
  9. actynolites
  10. actynopterigian
  11. actynopterigians

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: actus rei (page history and authors); actus reus (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: “actus rei.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/actus_rei. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.