lawgrad91 wrote:Exhibit 864 in why a person shouldn’t use big words if he/she doesn’t know which big word he/she means.
Found in our case management system: “...Both defendants waived preliminary hearing in exchange for these matters being handled as...misdemeanors...in the circuit court with a small active amount of jail time COMMISERATE therewith.”
Commiserate means to feel sympathy for. Jethro means COMMENSURATE.
(I cleaned up his subject-verb agreement, too.)
In law school, my business drafting professor told us that we should never use big words unless we know exactly what they mean. So, we had an opportunity to draft a business contract. There, on the first page of his draft, one of my classmates used the term, "WITNESSETH." The professor flashed this contract up on the big screen (in the days of overhead projectors) and asked my classmate, "What does 'witnesseth' mean?" My classmate stammered a bit and admitted that he didn't know what it meant, but that it sounded like a good legal term to throw in a contract.
"Take it out of the contract, and the contract still means the same thing," our professor said.
A few months later, while sitting for the bar exam in Raleigh, the silence of the test was broken by muffled giggles. I looked up and saw that classmate shaking his head and muttering, "Witnesseth." The word was included in a fact pattern on our bar exam. (It didn't add to or take away from the fact pattern, but still. . . )