Definition
In legal usage, adieu is a Law French term meaning "without day" — that is, without a day appointed for the party to return to court. When a court dismissed a matter adieu, the dismissal was final and absolute, not merely a continuance or postponement. The phrase signals that the case or party was sent away from the court's jurisdiction permanently, with no future appearance required or permitted.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Said to wish a final farewell; goodbye.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Good-by; farewell; an expression of kind wishes at parting.
The common meaning and the legal meaning share surface similarity — both suggest a final parting — but they diverge in legal weight. In ordinary English, adieu is simply a word of farewell. In legal usage, it is a term of art carrying jurisdictional consequence: it denotes that a court has conclusively discharged a matter, not merely said goodbye to the parties for now. A researcher who reads adieu in Year Book sources as a social pleasantry will miss the operative procedural significance entirely.
Common Confusion
Adieu is closely related to, and sometimes confused with, aller sans jour (or aller a dieu), the fuller Year Book phrase meaning "to go without day" or "to go to God." Burrill notes the overlap explicitly and cross-references Aler a dieu. The distinction matters: adieu is typically the shorthand descriptor applied to a dismissal, while aller sans jour describes the procedural act itself — the court's sending the party away. In practice the terms appear interchangeably in historical sources, but careful reading of context will usually clarify which function the word is serving.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in Year Book materials or early common law sources will encounter adieu as a routine marker of final judicial disposition. Because the term appears in abbreviated and variant forms — including adeu and the fuller aler a dieu — keyword searching in digitized or transcribed sources requires attention to spelling variation. Burrill explicitly notes the alternate spelling adeu and the cross-referenced phrase Aler a dieu; a researcher who anchors on one spelling alone risks missing parallel passages.
The procedural significance is navigational: when adieu appears in a Year Book entry, it signals the terminus of a proceeding. This makes it useful for identifying case outcomes in sources that do not record judgments in the modern sense. It also means that any matter described as going adieu cannot, within that proceeding, be revived — a point relevant when tracing whether a claim was extinguished or merely suspended.
The phrase belongs to the broader vocabulary of sans jour terminology in medieval English procedure, a vocabulary that includes sine die (the Latin equivalent) and various French-language procedural formulae that persist into early American court records. Researchers in colonial and early republic materials may encounter these terms long after Year Book practice had formally ended.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Burrill's converge completely on the core definition: Law French, "without day," final dismissal from court. There is no disagreement among the shelf sources on meaning.
Burrill adds two pieces of information the Black's entries omit. First, he supplies the literal translation — "to God" — which reflects the fuller phrase aler a dieu and illuminates the connection between the shorthand adieu and its procedural antecedent. Second, he cross-references Money of Adieu, a related but distinct concept involving payments made at departure. Researchers who encounter financial references alongside adieu in historical sources should follow that cross-reference; Black's does not surface this connection.
None of the historical dictionaries place adieu in the broader sine die family or draw the comparison to Latin procedural equivalents. Researchers should make that connection independently.
Jurisdictional Note
Adieu as a live procedural term is effectively obsolete in all modern American and English jurisdictions. Its relevance is historical — Year Book practice, early common law courts, and the procedural vocabulary of medieval and early modern English legal proceedings. Sine die is the surviving functional equivalent in modern practice.