Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Plea for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "plea" — noun, pronounced /pliː/, with the stress on "plea", the single syllable.
Narrator: A plea is an urgent, emotional request for something, or a formal statement of guilt or innocence made by a defendant in court.
Narrator: In plain English, it is a heartfelt begging for help, or the answer a person gives when a court asks how they respond to a charge.
Narrator: It comes from Old French plait and plaid, meaning a lawsuit or agreement, which traces back to the Latin placitum, something that has been pleased or decided.
Narrator: A very common collocation is "a plea for help", which describes a desperate appeal made by someone in genuine trouble.
Narrator: It differs from request, because a request can be calm and routine, while a plea carries desperation, pressure or legal weight.
Narrator: A second collocation is "guilty plea", and figuratively we speak of a plea for patience when a company asks its customers to wait.
Narrator: Law, journalism, charity fundraising, diplomacy and customer support all rely on the word every single day.
Narrator: So remember: a plea is either a cry from the heart or an answer in the dock, and both demand a response.
Speaker A: Why does one small word cover both begging and courtrooms?
Speaker B: Because PLEA came from Old French plait, a lawsuit, and courts were the place where people pleaded, so the legal sense and the emotional sense grew side by side.
Speaker A: So the courtroom sense is the older one?
Speaker B: Precisely, the legal sense arrived first in English, and the sense of an urgent appeal followed naturally from it.
Speaker A: Example sentences?
Speaker B: "She entered a plea of not guilty," meaning she formally denied the charge. "His plea for help went unanswered," meaning nobody responded to his desperate appeal. "The charity issued a plea for winter donations," meaning it appealed publicly for support.
Speaker A: Common mistakes?
Speaker B: Do not confuse the noun plea with the verb plead, and never write pleas when you mean please, as the two words are entirely unrelated.
Speaker A: Close relatives?
Speaker B: Appeal is the respectable cousin, entreaty is the near twin, and petition is the formal alternative, yet plea keeps its raw, urgent charm!
Speaker B: Let's use "plea" in AI prompts — useful for support ticket triage and for legal document summarisation.
Speaker A: How would that apply to a helpdesk system?
Speaker B: Ask the model to spot genuine urgency in incoming messages.
Prompt: Scan these support tickets and flag any message that reads as an urgent plea for help rather than a routine request.
Speaker A: And for legal software?
Speaker B: Use it to structure case data cleanly.
Prompt: Extract the defendant name, charge and recorded plea from each court transcript and return the results as a table.
Speaker A: Could it help a fundraising platform?
Speaker B: Yes, for drafting campaign copy with the right emotional pitch.
Prompt: Write three short donation page paragraphs, each framed as a sincere plea for support without exaggerating the charity's claims.
Speaker A: One more?
Speaker B: This one tidies up tone in outgoing product messages.
Prompt: Rewrite this service outage notice so that the plea for customer patience sounds calm, honest and professional.
Plea — meaning in Arabic & definition More P courses GL Dictionary