Word.ws English Dictionary

Terry stop

Terry stop noun: the brief detention of a person by the police on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity but short of probable cause to arrest.

Noun

Terry stop (plural Terry stops)

  1. (US) The brief detention of a person by the police on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity but short of probable cause to arrest.

Forms of Terry stop

pluralTerry stops

Origin of Terry stop

From the legal case Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), in which the Supreme Court held that police may briefly detain a person who they reasonably suspect is involved in criminal activity.

Questions about Terry stop

What does Terry stop mean?
Terry stop means the brief detention of a person by the police on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity but short of probable cause to arrest.
What part of speech is Terry stop?
Terry stop is a noun.
What is the plural of Terry stop?
The plural of Terry stop is Terry stops.

Words near Terry stop in the dictionary

  1. Terry Hie Hie
  2. terry nappies
  3. terry nappy
  4. Terry search
  5. Terry searches
  6. Terry stop
  7. Terry stops
  8. terrycloth
  9. terrycloths
  10. Terryology
  11. Terryville

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Terry stop (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: “Terry stop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/terry_stop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.