The jury is out

[tonbei]

I have a question about the following sentences from a novel.

Lucy lets me know the jury is out. “The jury’s left the courtroom, and
the pundits are predicting they’ll find him not guilty.”
("Bone Bed " by Patricia Cornwell, p345)

context ( or situation):
1) Scarpetta, the first narrator, attended a trial yesterday as an
expert witness, and is now at the the Cambridge Forensic Center with
Lucy, her niece
2) Lucy is reporting about the course of that trial, as she's looking at
the net news.

question: about "the jury is out".
My guess is: the jury aren't in the courtroom, meaning they're now in
the jury room to deliberate.

And about "the jury" as a collective noun
It could be either: "the jury is" or "the jury are" ?

[Aidan Kehoe]

Post by tonbei
I have a question about the following sentences from a novel.
Lucy lets me know the jury is out. “The jury’s left the courtroom, and
the pundits are predicting they’ll find him not guilty.”
("Bone Bed " by Patricia Cornwell, p345)
1) Scarpetta, the first narrator, attended a trial yesterday as an
expert witness, and is now at the the Cambridge Forensic Center with
Lucy, her niece
2) Lucy is reporting about the course of that trial, as she's looking at
the net news.
question: about "the jury is out".
My guess is: the jury aren't in the courtroom, meaning they're now in
the jury room to deliberate.

Yes.

Post by tonbei
And about "the jury" as a collective noun
It could be either: "the jury is" or "the jury are" ?

Yes.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by tonbei
question: about "the jury is out".
My guess is: the jury aren't in the courtroom, meaning they're now in
the jury room to deliberate.

Yes.

Post by tonbei
And about "the jury" as a collective noun
It could be either: "the jury is" or "the jury are" ?

Yes.

I think that it is mostly singular in the expression "The jury is out".

I might add that the expression is also used to say that something has
not been decided.

Are you and Alex an item now?
The jury is still out.

[jerryfriedman]

Post by tonbei
I have a question about the following sentences from a novel.
Lucy lets me know the jury is out. “The jury’s left the courtroom,

and

Post by tonbei
the pundits are predicting they’ll find him not guilty.”
("Bone Bed " by Patricia Cornwell, p345)
1) Scarpetta, the first narrator, attended a trial yesterday as an
expert witness, and is now at the the Cambridge Forensic Center with
Lucy, her niece
2) Lucy is reporting about the course of that trial, as she's looking

at

Post by tonbei
the net news.
question: about "the jury is out".
My guess is: the jury aren't in the courtroom, meaning they're now in
the jury room to deliberate.

Yes.

Post by tonbei
And about "the jury" as a collective noun
It could be either: "the jury is" or "the jury are" ?

Yes.

"Is" is much more common than "are". Also "are" is much
more common in Britain than the U.S., as usual in such
constructions.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=The+jury+is%3Aeng_us%2CThe+jury+are%3Aeng_us%2CThe+jury+is%3Aeng_gb%2CThe+jury+are%3Aeng_gb&year_start=1930&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false

https://tinyurl.com/5b6r6cwb

(I made it case-sensitive to eliminate "members of
the jury are" etc.)

The shift in number from "the jury is" to "they" is
common, at least in American English.

--
Jerry Friedman
--
Jerry Friedman

--

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by jerryfriedman
"Is" is much more common than "are". Also "are" is much
more common in Britain than the U.S., as usual in such
constructions.

I just made a Ngram with "the jury is out,the jury are out" and both gb
and us.

"Are" is extremely seldom, and the level is about the same in both
languages. The level of "is" is approximately the same until around
1980. Both curves rise, but gb twice as much. They are down again by
2020.

I wonder what happened.

[Peter Moylan]

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen

"Is" is much more common than "are". Also "are" is much more
common in Britain than the U.S., as usual in such constructions.

I just made a Ngram with "the jury is out,the jury are out" and both
gb and us.
"Are" is extremely seldom, and the level is about the same in both
languages. The level of "is" is approximately the same until around
1980. Both curves rise, but gb twice as much. They are down again by
2020.
I wonder what happened.

I don't know what happened in 1980, but otherwise here is my take on it.
In legal practice, the jury is an indivisible body. It does not interact
with witnesses or others in the case. The lawyers should not address
individual jury members, only the jury as a whole. Even the judge
interacts only with the jury foreman, and in that interaction he is
addressing the office of foreman rather than the holder of that office.

The jurors become individuals only in their confidential discussions
inside the jury room, and the rest of the world is not supposed to
discover what goes on there. For most purposes, then, the jury is a
singular entity.

A minor correction to your English: we don't use "seldom" that way. The
word you needed was "rare".

"Seldom" is seldom used creatively these days. That is, it is used, but
only in phrases that sound like fixed formulae. You will mostly find it
immediately before a verb (We seldom go to that restaurant these days)
or in the middle of a compound verb (I have seldom seen him so happy).
This rigidity of use suggests to me that it is on its way out. Not
immediately, but within the next few centuries.

[Garrett Wollman]

Post by Peter Moylan
"Seldom" is seldom used creatively these days. That is, it is used, but
only in phrases that sound like fixed formulae. You will mostly find it
immediately before a verb (We seldom go to that restaurant these days)
or in the middle of a compound verb (I have seldom seen him so happy).

Also with similarly archaic (or "poetic") subject-auxiliary inversion,
as in "Seldom have I seen ...".

-GAWollman

[Rich Ulrich]

On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 17:06:38 +0100, Bertel Lund Hansen

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen

Post by jerryfriedman
"Is" is much more common than "are". Also "are" is much
more common in Britain than the U.S., as usual in such
constructions.

I just made a Ngram with "the jury is out,the jury are out" and both gb
and us.
"Are" is extremely seldom, and the level is about the same in both
languages. The level of "is" is approximately the same until around
1980. Both curves rise, but gb twice as much. They are down again by
2020.
I wonder what happened.

I started with your Ngram and looked at "team" in several
charts -- Apparently "The team are" exists more than in the US,
but it is far less common in GbE than "The team is."

Whatever jump exists for "The jury is", I see it more strongly
in "The team is" -- which doubles, then falls back, between 2000
and 2010. "The jury is" has a much milder hump.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=The+team+is%2C+The+jury+is&year_start=1930&year_end=2022&corpus=en-GB&smoothing=0&case_insensitive=false


What happened? - a pop movie or song, or pet phrase of a
politician?

[Steve Hayes]

Post by tonbei
question: about "the jury is out".
My guess is: the jury aren't in the courtroom, meaning they're now in
the jury room to deliberate.

That's how I would understand it.

Post by tonbei
And about "the jury" as a collective noun
It could be either: "the jury is" or "the jury are" ?

In this case, "is". It's the jury, the whole jury, and nothing but the
jury.

But you might say "the jury are divided" (into factions with different
opinions), in which case you are referring, not to the whole jury but
to different components of it.