"it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six" meaning in English

See it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proverb

Etymology: A jury usually consists of twelve people; a coffin may be carried by six. Head templates: {{head|en|proverb|head=}} it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six, {{en-proverb}} it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six
  1. In a precarious situation, it is wiser to act decisively and be judged by a jury than to be killed through inaction. Categories (topical): Six, Twelve
    Sense id: en-it's_better_to_be_judged_by_twelve_than_to_be_carried_by_six-en-proverb-k1jrvc~P Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English proverbs, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys

Download JSON data for it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six meaning in English (1.9kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "A jury usually consists of twelve people; a coffin may be carried by six.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
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        "head": ""
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      "expansion": "it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six",
      "name": "en-proverb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
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          "parents": [
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          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
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          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
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        {
          "kind": "topical",
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          "name": "Six",
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            "Fundamental"
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        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Twelve",
          "orig": "en:Twelve",
          "parents": [
            "Numbers",
            "All topics",
            "Terms by semantic function",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "In a precarious situation, it is wiser to act decisively and be judged by a jury than to be killed through inaction."
      ],
      "id": "en-it's_better_to_be_judged_by_twelve_than_to_be_carried_by_six-en-proverb-k1jrvc~P",
      "links": [
        [
          "precarious",
          "precarious"
        ],
        [
          "situation",
          "situation"
        ],
        [
          "wiser",
          "wiser"
        ],
        [
          "decisive",
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        ],
        [
          "judge",
          "judge"
        ],
        [
          "jury",
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        ],
        [
          "kill",
          "kill"
        ],
        [
          "inaction",
          "inaction"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "A jury usually consists of twelve people; a coffin may be carried by six.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "proverb",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six",
      "name": "en-proverb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English proverbs",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "en:Six",
        "en:Twelve"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "In a precarious situation, it is wiser to act decisively and be judged by a jury than to be killed through inaction."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "precarious",
          "precarious"
        ],
        [
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        ],
        [
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        ],
        [
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          "decisive"
        ],
        [
          "judge",
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        ],
        [
          "jury",
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        ],
        [
          "kill",
          "kill"
        ],
        [
          "inaction",
          "inaction"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.