plead the belly
plead the belly verb: to attempt to use one's claimed pregnancy to avoid execution.
Verb
plead the belly (third-person singular simple present pleads the belly, present participle pleading the belly, simple past and past participle pleaded the belly)
- To attempt to use one's claimed pregnancy to avoid execution.
- She isn't hanged, while in jail, because she pleads the belly.1994, Leslie Scalapino, Defoe, Sun and Moon Press, →ISBN
- Over 25 per cent of the 463 women who were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey pleaded the belly between 1674 and 1699, and 38 per cent from 1700 to 1724, though a much smaller proportion did so later.2009, Shani D'Cruze, Louise A. Jackson, Women, Crime and Justice in England since 1660, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN
Forms of plead the belly
| third-person singular present | pleads the belly |
|---|---|
| present participle | pleading the belly |
| past participle | pleaded the belly |
| past | pleaded the belly |
Questions about plead the belly
- What does plead the belly mean?
- Plead the belly means to attempt to use one's claimed pregnancy to avoid execution.
- What part of speech is plead the belly?
- Plead the belly is a verb.
- What is the past tense of plead the belly?
- The past tense of plead the belly is pleaded the belly.
Words near plead the belly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: plead the belly (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-plead the belly.wav.
Cite this entry: “plead the belly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plead_the_belly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.