Jarndyce

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A surname borne by the family in Dickens's novel Bleak House ; a name tied to the interminable chancery suit that drains the estate
2. The family name of a character in Charles Dickens's Bleak House ; a famously never-ending lawsuit that dominates the novel's plot
3. Surname of the litigants in Dickens's Bleak House ; a proverbially endless court case whose costs swallow everything involved

Etymology: In 1852 Charles Dickens began serializing "Bleak House", a novel built around a lawsuit that never ends. The suit is "Jarndyce and Jarndyce," a dispute over an inheritance that passes through the English Court of Chancery for generations, consuming the estate and the lives of the people caught in it. Dickens invented the surname. It has no older source in English. He gave it to the family at the center of the case, and the lawsuit's name became the book's most recognizable title. The name outlived the novel because Dickens was attacking a real institution. The Court of Chancery was notorious for delay and expense, and its cases could drag on for decades. Readers recognized the satire immediately, and "Jarndyce" came to be used, in legal and general writing alike, as shorthand for any interminable lawsuit.