Word.ws English Dictionary

lesser included offense

lesser included offense noun: a crime the elements of which coincide with the elements of a more serious crime, from which the prosecutor is therefore precluded from separately charging a criminal defendant.

Noun

lesser included offense (plural lesser included offenses)

  1. A crime the elements of which coincide with the elements of a more serious crime, from which the prosecutor is therefore precluded from separately charging a criminal defendant.
    • A robbery is an assault combined with a theft; a person can not be criminally charged with both the robbery and the assault that occurred during the robbery; the assault is a lesser included offense.

Forms of lesser included offense

plurallesser included offenses
alternative formlesser included offence

Questions about lesser included offense

What does lesser included offense mean?
Lesser included offense means a crime the elements of which coincide with the elements of a more serious crime, from which the prosecutor is therefore precluded from separately charging a criminal defendant.
What part of speech is lesser included offense?
Lesser included offense is a noun.
What is the plural of lesser included offense?
The plural of lesser included offense is lesser included offenses.

Words near lesser included offense in the dictionary

  1. lesser grey shrikes
  2. lesser hedgehog tenrec
  3. lesser hedgehog tenrecs
  4. lesser included offence
  5. lesser included offences
  6. lesser included offense
  7. lesser included offenses
  8. lesser jacana
  9. lesser jacanas
  10. lesser kestrel
  11. lesser kestrels

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lesser included offense (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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Cite this entry: “lesser included offense.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lesser_included_offense. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.