TRIAL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Trial

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/trˈaɪəl/ /traɪl/ Listen

noun

Trial n.

1.

The act of trying or testing in any manner. Specifically:

(a)

Any effort or exertion of strength for the purpose of ascertaining what can be done or effected. "(I) defy thee to the trial of mortal fight."

(b)

The act of testing by experience; proof; test. "Repeated trials of the issues and events of actions."

(c)

Examination by a test; experiment, as in chemistry, metallurgy, etc.

2.

The state of being tried or tempted; exposure to suffering that tests strength, patience, faith, or the like; affliction or temptation that exercises and proves the graces or virtues of men. "Others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings."

3.

That which tries or afflicts; that which harasses; that which tries the character or principles; that which tempts to evil; as, his child's conduct was a sore trial. "Every station is exposed to some trials."

4.

(Law) The formal examination of the matter in issue in a cause before a competent tribunal; the mode of determining a question of fact in a court of law; the examination, in legal form, of the facts in issue in a cause pending before a competent tribunal, for the purpose of determining such issue.

Synonyms: Test; attempt; endeavor; effort; experiment; proof; essay. See Test, and Attempt.

See images of 'Trial'

Etymology of 'Trial'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Trial" Quotes from Famous Books

... "nobs," arose among the internal factions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the public attention.]), we really were such constructively by the place we assumed. If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered at least the skirts of ...

— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... treatises gave only the dry husks of rhetoric, the conventional analyses, the stock definitions. In the second place rhetoric was little applied. The political life of western Europe centered in the camp, not in the forum. The classical tradition of trial by a large jury, as the Areopagus or the Centumviri, had given place to trial before the regal or manorial court. Thus rhetoric dried up and lost whatever reality it had possessed in ...

— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... Quick. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end: If he be chaste, the flame will back descend, And turn him to no pain; but if he start, It is the flesh of a ...

— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... City. Every particle of moral energy which I possess, I have invested here. Nearly all of my friends are associated with this community. Especially am I bound by ties of deepest reverence and affection to this church. Here are memories of joy and sorrow and great trial which are more truly a part of me than the voice with which I speak, or the hand with which I turn these pages. It [3] needed but this single summons to teach me what I had not known—how deeply my roots are struck into the soil of this place, and how great the pain and hazard of ...

— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes

... Our greatest trial was to pass a dark, lonely pool, covered with pond-lilies, peopled with bullfrogs and water snakes, and haunted by two white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would beat as we approached ...

— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

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