COLLOQUIUM. In Pleading. A ge neral averment in an action for slander con necting the whole publication with the pre vious statement, 1 Starkie, Sland. 431 ; Heard, Lib. & Sland. 228; or stating that the whole publication applies to the plaintiff, and to the extrinsic matters alleged in his declaration. 1 Greenleaf, Ev. 417.
An averment that the words were spoken "of or concerning" the plaintiff, where the words are actionable in themselves, 6 Term, 162; 16 Pick. Mass. 132; Croke Jac. 674; Heard, Lib. & Sland. 212; 1 Greenleaf, Ev. 417; or where the injurious meaning which the plaintiff assigns to the words results from some extrinsic matter, or of and concerning, or with reference to, such matter. 2 Pick. Mass. 328; 13 id. 189; 16 id. 1; Heard, Lib. & Sland. 212, 217; 11 Mees. & W. Exch. 287; 7 Bingh. 119.
An averment that the words in question are spoken of or concerning some usage, re port, or fact which gives to words otherwise indifferent the peculiar defamatory meaning assigned to them. Shaw, C. J., 16 Pick.
Mass. 6.
Whenever words have the slanderous meaning alleged, not by their own intrinsic force, but by reason of the existence of some extraneous fact, this fact must be averred in a traversablo form, which averment ie called the inducement. There must then be a colloquzunt averring that the slan derous words were spoken of or concerning this fact. Then the word "meaning," or innnendo, is used to connect the matters thus introduced by averments and colloquia with the particular words laid, showing their identity and drawing what is then the legal inference from the whole declaration, that such was, under the circumstances thus set out, the meaning of the words used. Per Shaw, C. J.; 16 Pick. Mass. 6. See INNUENDO.