accessory during the fact

1. 1.

   a person who witnesses a crime but does not try to prevent it

   Broaderaccessory

Questions about accessory during the fact

What does accessory during the fact mean?

accessory during the fact means "a person who witnesses a crime but does not try to prevent it".

Is accessory during the fact a common word?

accessory during 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.