Secondary Rules: Noscitur a Sociis, Ejusdem Generis and Reddendo Singula Singulis

In one line

These three rules tell you how a word takes meaning from the words beside it: noscitur a sociis says a doubtful word is coloured by its company, ejusdem generis says a general word following a list of a single class is confined to that class, and reddendo singula singulis says that where a sentence has several subjects and several objects, each is referred to the one it belongs with.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: noscitur a sociis means that a word is known by the company it keeps, so that the meaning of a doubtful word may be gathered from the words associated with it; ejusdem generis, of the same kind or nature, means that where general words follow an enumeration of persons or things of a particular class, the general words are construed as limited to persons or things of that same class, provided the specific words form a genus; and reddendo singula singulis means that where a sentence contains several antecedents and several consequences, they are to be read distributively, each phrase or expression being referred to its appropriate object.

Why they are called secondary or subsidiary

Because they do not tell a court what a provision is for. They are tools of language, applied after the primary rules have failed to settle a doubt, and every one of them yields to a clear contrary intention.

That subordinate status is not a formality. Two of the three, noscitur a sociis and ejusdem generis, apply only where there is a doubt, and a court that uses them to create a doubt has used them backwards. The authority for that limit is State of Bombay v. Hospital Mazdoor Sabha, worked below.

Noscitur a sociis

The rule

A word is known by the company it keeps. Where a word of uncertain meaning stands among other words, the associated words may be used to fix its meaning, on the footing that the legislature grouped them because they belong together.

The authority, and its limit

State of Bombay v. Hospital Mazdoor Sabha, AIR 1960 SC 610.

Facts. State of Bombay v. Hospital Mazdoor Sabha, AIR 1960 SC 610. Two ward servants of the J.J. Group of Hospitals, Bombay, which was under State control and management, were retrenched without the compensation required by section 25F(b) of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947. They applied to the High Court for a writ. Everything turned on whether a State-run hospital is an "industry" within section 2(j), which defines industry to include any business, trade, undertaking, manufacture or calling of employers.

Held. The hospital was an industry, and payment of compensation under section 25F(b) is a condition precedent to a valid retrenchment. On construction the Court refused to cut down the word "undertaking" by applying noscitur a sociis to the narrower words around it, holding that the maxim is a rule of construction which can apply only where the intention of the legislature in associating terms of wider import with those of narrower import is in doubt, or the meaning of the wider terms used is in doubt. It added that a profit motive and the investment of capital are not indispensable requisites of an industry, and that only what can properly be described as regal or sovereign activity falls outside the definition.