Word.ws English Dictionary

mentes reae

mentes reae is the plural of mens rea.

Meaning of mens rea

Noun

mens rea (plural mentes reae)

  1. (general) A reactive mind, a conscious knowing by the individual that an act was committed, either by themselves or by another.
  2. A guilty mind, the conscious knowing of a perpetrator while committing an act that the act is illicit.
    • As a general rule the act (or omission) causing death and the relevant mens rea must occur at the same time. The most obvious application of this rule to exclude liability is the case where the mens rea is formed after the actus reus has taken place.2006, David Lanham, David Wood, Bronwyn Bartal, Rob Evans, Criminal Laws in Australia, page 198

Origin of mentes reae

First attested in 1932; from the Latin mentēs (“minds”, the nominative plural form of mēns, “mind”) + reae (the feminine nominative plural form of reus, “guilty”).

Questions about mentes reae

What is mentes reae the plural of?
Mentes reae is the plural of mens rea.

Words near mentes reae in the dictionary

  1. Menter
  2. menteri besar
  3. Mentering
  4. menteris besar
  5. Menters
  6. mentes reae
  7. mentha
  8. menthaceous
  9. menthadiene
  10. menthane
  11. menthanes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mentes reae (page history and authors); mens rea (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: “mentes reae.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mentes_reae. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.