accessory before the fact

1. 1.

   a person who procures or advises or commands the commission of a felony but who is not present at its perpetration

   Broaderaccessory

Questions about accessory before the fact

What does accessory before the fact mean?

accessory before the fact means "a person who procures or advises or commands the commission of a felony but who is not present at its perpetration".

Is accessory before the fact a common word?

accessory before the fact is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.