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Glite Dictionary
quarter sessions

quarter sessions

1 9.9
A local court in England and Wales that met four times a year to try crimes before 1972
  • noun
  • /ˈkwɔːtə ˈsɛʃənz/
  • Archaic
translation icon : sesiones trimestrales
  • The judge presided over the cases presented at the quarter sessions in his local courthouse.

Examples

  • Local residents attended the quarter sessions to witness the justice being served in their community.

  • I met with him at the quarter sessions in Taunton.

    Persuasion (1995)

  • The feuding noble families of the Russells and the Berkeleys arrived collectively with five hundred armed men at the Worcester quarter sessions; fortunately, peace was brokered at the court.

    Academic text (2009)

  • Given the dual nature of your crime, I am minded to pass this case upward to the Quarter Sessions, with the recommendation that you spend the next seven years contemplating your sins overlooking the exotic vista of Botany Bay.

    Peterloo (2018)

  • After months of preparation, the criminal cases were finally scheduled for the quarter sessions in the town center.

Surface Forms

quarter sessions singular
quarter session plural

Morphology

quarter + session

The components 'quarter' (a fourth/time segment) and 'session' (a formal sitting) transparently combine to indicate meetings held quarterly, so a learner who knows the words can infer a periodic set of sittings. However, the specific institutional/legal sense — a particular type of local court in England and Wales with historical status — is specialized and not fully predictable from the parts, so the expression is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Quarter sessions comes from the simple idea of a court meeting every three months: quarter for one of four parts of the year and sessions for meetings. Local judges would gather 'four times a year' to hear criminal cases and local matters, so the name came to mean that 'local court'.