From Wikipedia for other curious non-native speakers:
Voir dire /ˈvwɑr ˌdiər/ is a legal phrase that refers to a variety of procedures connected with jury trials. It originally referred to an oath taken by jurors to tell the truth (Latin verum dicere), i.e., to say what is true, what is objectively accurate or subjectively honest, or both.
> ...an oath taken by jurors to tell the truth (Latin verum dicere), i.e., to say what is true ....
I've always been amused by this interpretation and wondered where it originated --- it seems like an urban legend --- because:
1. In legal parlance, the term voir dire refers to the questions posed to prospective jurors by the judge or lawyers to assess whether any of them is biased or has some other disqualification or disability.
2. The term voir dire is French: After the Norman Conquest, that term and a number of others gradually infiltrated the language of English courts [1].
3. In French, voir is the infinitive to see and dire is the infinitive to say; as someone who was bilingual in French and English as a kid (but, sadly, is no longer), I always took the term voir dire to mean, roughly, "let's see what they [the prospective jurors] have to say."
Fun fact: In Texas, you'd better pronounce it "VORE dye-er" if you don't want to be recognized as a noob or an out-of-towner. The rest of the country seems to use the French pronunciation "vwahr deer."
It's shorthand for jury selection, in which lawyers from both sides shoot down the jurors they think are going to be unfavorable to them based on predictions from scant evidence; this is "Law & Order" law theory, by the way, not actual court-of-law theory, which I know little about. I just thought it was a useful analogy.
Voir dire /ˈvwɑr ˌdiər/ is a legal phrase that refers to a variety of procedures connected with jury trials. It originally referred to an oath taken by jurors to tell the truth (Latin verum dicere), i.e., to say what is true, what is objectively accurate or subjectively honest, or both.