benefit of the doubt

English

Alternative forms

• BOTD (initialism)
• benefit of doubt (rare)

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU):

  (file)

Noun

benefit of the doubt

1. A favorable judgement given in the absence of full evidence.
   • 2019 May 19, Alex McLevy, “The final Game Of Thrones brings a pensive but simple meditation about stories (newbies)”, in The A.V. Club‎^[1]:

     Plenty of past seasons’ events could look ill-conceived in the critical eye of Monday-morning quarterbacking, but previously, the show had earned the benefit of the doubt that missteps on the part of supposedly intelligent characters were a plausible lack of in-world foresight.

2. (cricket) The principle employed by umpires in cases of uncertainty concerning a batsman possibly being out, in which the decision must be in the batsman's favour.

Usage notes

Almost always used with the verb "give" as in "to give someone the benefit of the doubt".

Translations

a favorable judgement given in the absence of full evidence

• Arabic: يفترض حُسن النيَة
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 疑點利益／疑点利益

• Dutch: voordeel van de twijfel n
• Esperanto: benefico de dubo
• Finnish: epäselvässä tapauksessa tuomitaan syytetyn eduksi
• French: bénéfice du doute (fr) m
• German: Im Zweifel für den Angeklagten; nicht das Schlimmste annehmen
• Hebrew: מחמת הספק
• Hindi: please add this translation if you can
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Icelandic: (give the benefit of the doubt) láta njóta vafans, (give the benefit of the doubt) telja saklausan uns sekt hefur verið sönnuð m
• Italian: beneficio del dubbio
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: la tvilen komme tiltalte til gode

  Nynorsk: la tvilen kome tiltalte til gode

• Persian: please add this translation if you can
• Portuguese: benefício da dúvida m
• Russian: please add this translation if you can
• Spanish: beneficio de la duda

See also

• presumption of innocence