Empaneling

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of selecting a group of individuals to serve as jurors involves the formal appointment and assembly of these participants for a legal trial
2. This term describes the formal procedure of gathering individuals to create a jury for court proceedings by selecting qualified members
3. The act of officially assembling a group of individuals to serve in a judicial capacity involves a defined selection and appointment procedure for legal matters

Etymology: "Empaneling" is the present participle of "empanel", and the history of the verb is really the history of a single old French word. Its root is "panel", a word that once meant a piece of cloth or a strip of parchment. In medieval Latin, "pannellus" was a small piece of cloth, and by the Old French period a "panel" had come to mean a schedule or list written on a strip of parchment. Lists of people summoned for jury duty were kept on such strips, so a "panel" became the group of jurors itself. The verb grew from that legal sense. Old French "empaneller" meant to enroll people on a jury list, to put them into the panel. English borrowed it as Middle English "empanellen", and the spelling "empanel" later settled in, with the doubled "l" of "empaneling" and "empanelled" kept in some forms. The prefix "em-" (or "en-") is the same one found in verbs like "enroll", meaning to put something into a list.

Synonyms: selecting, appointing, designating, enrolling, nominating

Antonyms: dismissing, removing, disbanding, disqualifying, excluding