pleader

Partly from Middle English pleder, pledere, equivalent to plead +‎ -er; and partly from Middle English pledour, plaidour, from Anglo-Norman plaidur, pledour, Old French plaidëor, pledëor.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpliːdə/

pleader (plural pleaders)

1. (law) a person who pleads in court; an advocate [from 13th c.]
   • 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “The Education of Otis Yeere”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 30:

     “My District's worked by some man at Darjiling, on the strength of a native pleader's false reports. Oh, it's a heavenly place!”

   • 1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin, published 2005, page 25:

     ‘Soon after I came out I asked one of the pleaders to have a smoke with me – only a cigarette, mind.’

   • 1954, Plato, translated by Hugh Tredennick, “Socrates on Trial: The Apology”, in The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin Classics), Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, →OCLC, page 20:

     That is the first duty of the juryman, just as it is the pleader's duty to speak the truth.

2. (generally) someone who pleads or implores [from 16th c.]

• special pleader

• pearled, pedaler, predeal, replead