the.com/misdemeanor
crime's polite cousin — bad enough to cuff you, small enough to shrug off
means A minor criminal offense that's punishable but less serious than a felony — think petty theft or disorderly conduct, not grand schemes.
from A tidy assembly job: the prefix 'mis-' (meaning 'wrongly' or 'badly,' a Germanic inheritance) bolted onto 'demeanor,' which comes from the verb 'demean' in its older, neutral sense of 'to conduct oneself' — from Old French 'demener,' 'to lead' or 'manage' (de- plus 'mener,' to lead, from Latin 'minare,' to drive cattle). So a misdemeanor is literally a mis-behaving, a conducting-of-oneself gone wrong. The word surfaced in English legal language in the 15th century. The unrelated, sneering sense of 'demean' — to lower or degrade — came later and by a separate path.
- origin
- from Old French mesfaire, to do wrong
- the line
- under a year jail separates it from felony
- stacking trick
- prosecutors pile minor charges into major leverage
- jaywalking
- counts as one in many U.S. states
- record
- still haunts job and housing applications
simple assault — most u.s. states classify non-aggravated assault as misdemeanor, punishable by up to 1 year jail
dui first offense — california vehicle code 23152, misdemeanor for first-time dui violations nationwide
disorderly conduct — generic misdemeanor charge used by police in most u.s. jurisdictions for public disturbances