What's the difference between petition and plea?

Petition


Definition:

  • (n.) A prayer; a supplication; an imploration; an entreaty; especially, a request of a solemn or formal kind; a prayer to the Supreme Being, or to a person of superior power, rank, or authority; also, a single clause in such a prayer.
  • (n.) A formal written request addressed to an official person, or to an organized body, having power to grant it; specifically (Law), a supplication to government, in either of its branches, for the granting of a particular grace or right; -- in distinction from a memorial, which calls certain facts to mind; also, the written document.
  • (v. t.) To make a prayer or request to; to ask from; to solicit; to entreat; especially, to make a formal written supplication, or application to, as to any branch of the government; as, to petition the court; to petition the governor.
  • (v. i.) To make a petition or solicitation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Responding to a “We the People” petition, launched after Snowden’s initial leaks were published in the Guardian two years ago, the Obama administration on Tuesday reiterated its belief that he should face criminal charges for his actions.
  • (2) • Queen Margaret Union, one of the University of Glasgow's two student unions, says 200 students there are marching on the principal's office at the moment to present an anti-cuts petition.
  • (3) The bench rejected the petition seeking prosecution for offending Hindus, saying it was a work of art and citing India's tradition of graphic sexual iconography.
  • (4) Some art experts have petitioned against Seracini drilling through the Vasari fresco, claiming any paint found behind might have been left by another artist.
  • (5) Nearly 740,000 people have signed a petition calling for an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, organised by the campaign group Avaaz.
  • (6) Monday's petition showdown is a chance to demonstrate they have the popular support to back up those claims.
  • (7) Cameron made clear in his speech that Britain remains committed to the individual right to petition.
  • (8) Differently from generalised non convulsive seizures (like petit mal absences), their first appearance has no typical age limit, however, their proportion to other forms of seizures increases in adolescence and adults especially between the third and fifth decade of life.
  • (9) Induction of petite (cytoplasmic-respiration-deficient, rho-,rho-) mutations in yeast and deletion of mitochondrial drug-resistance genetic markers were compared after after treatment with ethidium and the corresponding photoaffinity probe, ethidium azide.
  • (10) Signing up Round-robin emails encouraging web users to sign e-petitions have attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures.
  • (11) Releasing Eric Garner grand jury papers 'would help restore public trust' Read more A petition from the the New York Civil Liberties Union and others had called for the release of the grand jury transcripts, including testimony by Daniel Pantaleo, the New York police officer involved in the incident.
  • (12) In terms of education, a representative of the Born Free Foundation once pointed out, out of millions of visitors to zoos in Europe, only 2% signed a bushmeat petition.
  • (13) Of course, saying this even while petitioning for easier repayment on Greece's mountain of debt is just another example of austerity's topsy-turvyism.
  • (14) In a relatively high proportion of the transformants, disruption of the 17-kDa gene was accompanied by the appearance of a second mutation causing a petite phenotype.
  • (15) Ursula K Le Guin, who gained significant author support for her petition calling for "the principle of copyright, which is directly threatened by the settlement, [to] be honoured and upheld in the United States", also opted out.
  • (16) In disorders of petit mal epilepsy and parkinsonian tremor, centrally and peripherally observable rhythmic patterns are due to network oscillations of thalamocortical cells.
  • (17) It’s time to speak out, to bring this impunity to an end, time for men to change their behaviour rather than for women to adapt to it,” the petition says.
  • (18) None had petit mal, confirming its rarity in the elderly.
  • (19) Ureterosigmoidostomy with anti-reflux technique (Petit-Leadbetter procedure) was performed in 12 children, mainly after failure to repair an exstrophy.
  • (20) With 66,000 signatures on a petition after four days, immigration minister Peter Dutton cancelled Allen’s visa.

Plea


Definition:

  • (n.) That which is alleged by a party in support of his cause; in a stricter sense, an allegation of fact in a cause, as distinguished from a demurrer; in a still more limited sense, and in modern practice, the defendant's answer to the plaintiff's declaration and demand. That which the plaintiff alleges in his declaration is answered and repelled or justified by the defendant's plea. In chancery practice, a plea is a special answer showing or relying upon one or more things as a cause why the suit should be either dismissed, delayed, or barred. In criminal practice, the plea is the defendant's formal answer to the indictment or information presented against him.
  • (n.) A cause in court; a lawsuit; as, the Court of Common Pleas. See under Common.
  • (n.) That which is alleged or pleaded, in defense or in justification; an excuse; an apology.
  • (n.) An urgent prayer or entreaty.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Oscar Pistorius ‘to be released in August’ as appeal date is set for November Read more But the parole board at his prison overruled an emotional plea from the 29-year-old victim’s parents when it sat last week.
  • (2) Tony Abbott has refused to concede that saying Aboriginal people who live in remote communities have made a “lifestyle choice” was a poor choice of words as the father of reconciliation issued a public plea to rebuild relations with Indigenous people.
  • (3) Over the next few days, I look forward to reviewing this guilty plea closely to see whether it appropriately holds officers, directors and key executives individually accountable and whether the plea will be sufficient to help deter similar misconduct in the future,” he said.
  • (4) On Monday this week a second witness came forward and supported key aspects of Ruffin’s version of events, including that police had ignored Dhu’s pleas for help over several days.
  • (5) The son of the slain Afghan police commander (who is the husband of one of the killed pregnant woman and brother of the other) says that villagers refer to US Special Forces as the "American Taliban" and that he refrained from putting on a suicide belt and attacking US soldiers with it only because of the pleas of his grieving siblings.
  • (6) He is scheduled to return to court on Monday for a detention hearing and will enter a plea on 6 January.
  • (7) A plea is made to label the stroma of malignant cystosarcomas as to the cell(s) of origin so future investigators may evaluate the effect of various soft tissue patterns on prognosis.
  • (8) A military judge still must decide whether to accept his plea.
  • (9) Two women, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have also been accused; one of these women has submitted three guilty pleas.
  • (10) What happens to those often effective pleas for privacy the PCC distributes?
  • (11) A strong plea for adequate immobilization (three to six weeks) after carpal tunnel release is made.
  • (12) The boys claim they were entrapped, but one is now expected to change his plea to guilty.
  • (13) The driver refused to stop at her village despite her repeated pleas and instead drove her, the only passenger on the bus, to a remote farmhouse where he and the bus conductor were joined by five friends.
  • (14) On the face of it, Huhne's guilty plea last month on a charge of perverting the course of justice over a 2003 speeding case ought to have killed the Liberal Democrats' hopes of holding the seat.
  • (15) Ørnskov, who has been running Shire since May 2013, set out a plea to remain independent last month even as he admitted that he could not close the door on bids.
  • (16) A plea is made for legislative support to pay for lab work and the establishment of state or national laboratories equipped to handle evidentiary material.
  • (17) A plea is made for more accurate assessment of the disease status.
  • (18) The plea bargain agreement reveals that Blazer, who was general secretary of the North and Central American Concacaf governing body, began providing information to the authorities in December 2011 – more than three years before the US government charged 14 current and former Fifa officials with “hijacking” international football to run “a World Cup of fraud” to line their pockets by $150m.
  • (19) Bosch, who has been undergoing treatment for cocaine addiction since his guilty plea, was joined by more than two dozen friends and family members at his sentencing hearing.
  • (20) A day after making a personal appeal to the US and Cuban leaders to end their half-century of estrangement , Francis issued his plea to Colombia’s warring factions from Revolution Plaza at the end of his Sunday mass.