legalese

American  

[lee-guh-leez, -lees] / ˌli gəˈliz, -ˈlis /

noun

1. language containing an excessive amount of legal terminology or of legal jargon.

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legalese British  

/ ˌliːɡəˈliːz /

noun

1. the conventional language in which legal documents, etc, are written

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Etymology

Origin of legalese

First recorded in 1910–15; legal + -ese

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

legalese

Within the jargon and legalese of a seven-page letter, county Supt.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2026

Those rules have to be drafted in a formal, one-size-fits-all fashion, resulting in pages and pages of legalese.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 16, 2026

Securities filings are packed with repetitive legalese few will read, while the juicy bits in the footnotes require some expertise to understand.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 12, 2026

By design, the details of how "freedom cities" would be established are laden with legalese like "federal enclaves with special economic and jurisdictional zones" or "interstate compacts."

From Salon ● Mar. 17, 2025

That’s why guidelines on how to avoid legalese and other turbid professional styles call for using first- and second-person pronouns, inverting passives into actives, and letting verbs be verbs rather than zombie nouns.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker