All 8 Uses of
precedent
in
Bleak House
- On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might.†
Chpt 1-3
- Both the world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent and usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange games through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously!†
Chpt 1-3
- Nothing but a mine below it on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it in the least!†
Chpt 7-9
- Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach.†
Chpt 13-15 *
- Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is very rich in such precedents; and why should one be different from ten thousand?†
Chpt 37-39
- Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is very rich in such precedents; and why should one be different from ten thousand?†
Chpt 37-39
- Is Richard a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich in such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the Recording Angel?†
Chpt 37-39
- With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach!†
Chpt 58-60
Definition:
-
(precedent as in: sets a precedent) an example from a prior time -- typically used to justify similar occurrences at a later time (especially a judicial decision)