Noun

(en noun)

The act of prosecuting a scheme or endeavor.

:

(lb) The institution of legal proceedings (particularly criminal) against a person.

*

*:Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability:it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.

(lb) The prosecuting party.

*{{quote-news, date=21 August 2012, first=Ed, last=Pilkington, newspaper=The Guardian

, title= Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die? , passage=The prosecution case was that the men forced the sisters to strip, threw their clothes over the bridge, then raped them and participated in forcing them to jump into the river to their deaths. As he walked off the bridge, Clemons was alleged to have said: "We threw them off. Let's go."}}

Noun

(en noun)

(legal) In civil proceedings, the party responding to the complaint; one who is sued and called upon to make satisfaction for a wrong complained of by another.

(legal) In criminal proceedings, the accused.