Word.ws English Dictionary

grand jury

grand jury noun: a group of citizens assembled by the government to hear evidence against an accused, and determine whether an indictment for a crime should be brought.

Noun

grand jury (plural grand juries)

  1. A group of citizens assembled by the government to hear evidence against an accused, and determine whether an indictment for a crime should be brought.
    • Though the current wave of die-ins began after grand juries in Ferguson and New York City refused to indict the cops who used lethal force against Michael Brown and Eric Garner, they tap into a deep well of what professor Salamishah Tillet calls “civic estrangement” from a state that ignores...2014 December 19, Paul M Farber, “Die-ins demand that we bear witness to black people's fears that they'll be next”, in The Guardian
    • Justice department attorneys quickly filed paperwork in Manhattan and south Florida federal courts requesting unsealing of grand jury testimony for Epstein. […]A grand jury is a panel that decides whether evidence presented by prosecutors shows “probable cause” that someone committed a crime, and...2025 July 26, Victoria Bekiempis, “Trump bids to release Epstein grand jury files – what secrets might they hold?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
  2. The legal process that uses such a jury.

Forms of grand jury

pluralgrand juries

Origin of grand jury

From Middle English graunde jurie, from Anglo-Norman graund juree. Named because it typically has more jurors than the petit jury.

Questions about grand jury

What does grand jury mean?
Grand jury means a group of citizens assembled by the government to hear evidence against an accused, and determine whether an indictment for a crime should be brought.
What part of speech is grand jury?
Grand jury is a noun.
What is the plural of grand jury?
The plural of grand jury is grand juries.

Words near grand jury in the dictionary

  1. Grand Junction
  2. Grand Junctionite
  3. grand juries
  4. grand juror
  5. grand jurors
  6. grand jury
  7. Grand Kru
  8. Grand Lake
  9. Grand Lama
  10. Grand Lamas
  11. grand larcenies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grand jury (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: “grand jury.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grand_jury. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.