The jury is out

The jury is out is an idiom. An idiom is a figure of speech that is a word, group of words or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is not easily deduced from its literal definition. We will examine the definition of the expression the jury is out, where it came from and some examples of its use in sentences.

The jury is out is an expression that means no decision has been made in a matter, or that the answer to a question is not yet apparent. The phrase is also sometimes rendered as the jury is still out. The phrase comes from the court system, in which a jury hears a case and is then dismissed in order to debate the merits of that case and render a verdict. These deliberations are secret, and as long as the jury is out, no one knows what the verdict will be. The idiom the jury is out first came into use during the twentieth century, its popularity as an expression has soared since the 1980s.

Examples

The jury is out on this album, but it’s all but obvious that Lykke Li is committed to maintaining a certain sense of the alien in her music. (The Michigan Daily)

Although the jury is out on how well Nigeria will perform at this year’s FIFA World Cup, at least we know that Iwobi hit the right spots with his street style. (The Independent)

But JoAnn Manson, chief of the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, urged caution about the results, saying the “jury is still out” on whether high vitamin D levels can decrease the risk of colorectal cancer. (The Washington Post)