Word.ws English Dictionary

legal-ese

legal-ese is the alternative form of legalese.

Meaning of legalese

Noun

legalese (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory, informal) Technical jargon common in the legal profession; the argot of lawyers.
    • It is also his considered opinion that a condition precedent to any legislative action is that those best qualified to pronounce on the merits of a popular demand examine it in all its aspects. That is good Menzian legalese, as pompous as parody permits.1937 October 9, Smith's Weekly, Sydney, page 12, column 1
  2. (derogatory, informal) Wordy, ostentatious talk or writing that resembles legal writing, especially when confusing to laypeople; bureaucratese; officialese.

Questions about legal-ese

What is legal-ese the alternative form of?
Legal-ese is the alternative form of legalese.

Words near legal-ese in the dictionary

  1. legal void
  2. legal voids
  3. legal wall
  4. legal year
  5. legal years
  6. legal-ese
  7. legal-size
  8. legalese
  9. legalisation
  10. legalisations
  11. legalise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: legal-ese (page history and authors); legalese (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.

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