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legalese

American

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

noun

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

legalese British

/ ˌliːɡəˈliːz /

noun

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

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of legalese

First recorded in 1910–15; legal + -ese

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

legalese

Challenged during a news conference over whether the wording "ordinarily" meant some migrants would not be accepted by France, Farage said it was "legalese".

From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026

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

The term “shadow docket” itself sounds like wonky legalese, but in practice it’s quite simple.

From Salon ● Apr. 22, 2026

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

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023