a. and sb. Also 7 forinseck. [f. L. forens-is (f. forum FORUM) + -IC.]
A. adj. Pertaining to, connected with, or used in courts of law; suitable or analogous to pleadings in court. Forensic medicine: medicine in its relations to law; medical jurisprudence.
1659. Hammond, On Ps. cvi. 31. It signifies much more than justification, as in the forinseck sense that is opposite to condemning: for thus it should note no more than acquitting or pardoning him to whom it was here so accounted.
1690. Locke, Hum. Und., II. xxvi. (1695), 189. It [Person] is a Forensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only to intelligent Agents capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery.
1768. Blackstone, Comm., III. 84. These privileges were granted, that the students might not be distracted from their studies by legal process from distant courts, and other forensic avocations.
a. 1779. Warburton, Div. Legat., III. iv. Wks. 1788, II. 89. Lactantius, from a forensic Lawyer now become an advocate for Christianity, found nothing so much hindered its reception with the Learned as the doctrince of a future judgment.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., I. IV. iv. (1872), 122. Discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.
1845. Stephen, Comm. Laws Eng. (1874), I. 8. The frequent combination of medical with legal considerations, upon inquiries relative to suspected murder or doubtful sanity, and other points of the like nature, has given birth to a sort of mixed science, known by the name of Forensic Medicine, or Medical Jurisprudence, which may be considered as common ground to the practitioners both of law and physic.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., II. viii. Without taking the least notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in an imposing and forensic manner.
B. sb. U.S. A college exercise, consisting of a speech or (at Harvard) written thesis maintaining one side or the other of a given question.
1830. Collegian, 241, in B. H. Hall, College Words. What with themes, forensics, letters, memoranda, notes on lectures, verses, and articles, I find myself considerably hurried.
1837. Ord. & Regul. Harvard Univ., 12. Every omission of a theme or forensic … 48.
