litigation.

The pursuit or defense of a dispute through court proceedings.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• civil litigation
• prolonged litigation

On the page

The boundary dispute led to years of litigation.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal. Forms: Usually uncountable; no ordinary plural in this sense. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Commonness: moderately common.