Jane Doe
1
5.2
- noun
- Jargon
:
Jane Doe
- During the trial, the attorney presented evidence concerning the rights of the Jane Doe claiming damages.
Examples
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In the legal documents, the plaintiff was referred to simply as Jane Doe until her identity was revealed.
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Look for, you know, the matter of Jane Doe versus NBC Universal, Lorne Michaels and Horatio Sands.
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The police reported a case involving a Jane Doe who was found unconscious in the park.
Surface Forms
Morphology
Jane + Doe
This is a conventional placeholder name whose meaning ('an unidentified or anonymous woman') is a lexicalized legal/social convention rather than a compositional result of the parts; knowing the names 'Jane' and 'Doe' does not let a B1 learner infer anonymity. While many languages have analogous placeholder names, the specific form and use are language-specific and idiomatic, so the meaning is not predictable from the constituents.
Etymology
Jane Doe comes from an old court habit of using made-up names like 'John Doe' when a person's real name was not known. The female form Jane Doe later became the usual name for 'an unidentified woman', especially in legal cases.