ppl. a. [f. ACCUSE v. + -ED.] Charged with a crime or fault. Commonly used subst., as the accused: he or she who is accused in a court of justice, the prisoner at the bar.
1593. Shaks., Rich. II., I. i. 17. And frowning brow to brow, our selues will heare Th’ accuser, and the accused.
1728. Pope, Dunc., IV. 420. Th’ accus’d stood forth, and thus address’d the Queen.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., IV. 521. He and he alone … could save the accused from the gallows.
1876. Freeman, Norm. Conq., II. vii. 144. Eustace and the other accused persons should not be given up.
1894. ‘Mark Twain,’ Pudd’nhead Wilson, xxi. Much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused offered a very large reward for the knife with which this murder was done; that no thief came forward to claim that extraordinary reward.
