Word.ws English Dictionary

res judicata

res judicata noun: a legal claim that has already been decided in another lawsuit or proceeding, and therefore must be dismissed.

Noun

res judicata (plural res judicatae)

  1. A legal claim that has already been decided in another lawsuit or proceeding, and therefore must be dismissed.
  2. The legal doctrine that claims that a case already decided in a proceeding may not be brought in any later proceeding.

Forms of res judicata

pluralres judicatae
alternative formres adjudicata

Origin of res judicata

From Latin rēs (“thing, matter, affair”) and jūdicata, feminine nominative singular form of jūdicatus, past participle of jūdico (“judge”).

Questions about res judicata

What does res judicata mean?
Res judicata means a legal claim that has already been decided in another lawsuit or proceeding, and therefore must be dismissed.
What part of speech is res judicata?
Res judicata is a noun.
What is the plural of res judicata?
The plural of res judicata is res judicatae.

Words near res judicata in the dictionary

  1. res extensa
  2. res gestae
  3. res integra
  4. res inter alios acta
  5. res ipsa loquitur
  6. res judicata
  7. res judicatae
  8. res nullius
  9. res publica
  10. res.
  11. resaca

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: res judicata (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: “res judicata.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/res_judicata. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.