Crossword clues for talesman
talesman
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Talesman \Tales"man\, n.; pl. Talesmen. (Law)
A person called to make up a deficiency in the number of
jurors when a tales is awarded.
--Wharton.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"reserve member of a jury," 1670s, from tales "writ ordering bystanders to serve" in place of jurors not in attendance (late 15c.), via Anglo-French (mid-13c.), from Latin tales (in tales de circumstantibus "such persons from those standing about," a clause featured in such a writ), noun use of plural of talis "such, of such kind" (see that).
Wiktionary
Etymology 1 n. (context rare English) The author or relater of a tale; storyteller; a speaker of tales (male). Etymology 2
n. (context legal English) Someone summoned to a jury when a tales is awarded, to make up numbers.
Usage examples of "talesman".
The courtroom was comparatively quiet, the silence broken only by the droning voice of the clerk and the lazy interplay of question and answer between talesman and lawyer.
The court reconvened and a new talesman was called, resembling in appearance a professional hangman who for relaxation leaned toward the execution of Italians.
Each testified to substantially the same story and they occupied seventeen full days in the telling, so that when the prosecution rested, forty-two days had been consumed since the first talesman had been called.
The bulk of the spectators consisted of rejected talesmen, witnesses, law clerks, professional court loafers and women seeking emotional sensations which they had not the courage or the means to satisfy otherwise.
By recess thirty-seven talesmen had been examined without a foreman having been selected, and Mr.
A special panel of two hundred talesmen filled the first half dozen rows of benches, the others being occupied by witnesses both Chinese and white, policemen and the miscellaneous human flotsam and jetsam that always manages somehow or other to find its way to a murder trial.
Justice Babson glowered down upon the cowering defendant flanked by his distinguished counsel, Tutt & Tutt, and upon the two hundred good and true talesmen who, "all other business laid aside," had been dragged from the comfort of their homes and the important affairs of their various livelihoods to pass upon the merits of the issue duly joined between The People of the State of New York and Angelo Serafino, charged with murder.
Justice Babson glowered down upon the cowering defendant flanked by his distinguished counsel, Tutt &Tutt, and upon the two hundred good and true talesmen who, “all other business laid aside,” had been dragged from the comfort of their homes and the important affairs of their various livelihoods to pass upon the merits of the issue duly joined between The People of the State of New York and Angelo Serafino, charged with murder.
If the writer's recollection is not at fault, the large original panel drawn in the first Molineux trial was used up and several others had to be drawn until eight hundred talesmen had been interrogated before the jury was finally selected.
As to talesmen in other localities he has no knowledge or reliable information.
Practically the only question which these lawyers put to the different talesmen during the selection of the jury was, "Have you any prejudice against the defendant on account of his race?
As things stand to-day, a thief caught in the very act of picking a pocket in the night-time may challenge arbitrarily the twenty most intelligent talesmen called to sit as jurors in his case.