Definition
A Latin term meaning "it is adjourned." In the old English law reports, *adjournatur* was a formulaic closing word used to indicate that a case had been adjourned — that is, continued to a future sitting of the court without a final resolution. The term appears at the end of reported cases to signal that proceedings were suspended rather than concluded.
Common Confusion
*Adjournatur* is sometimes encountered alongside the variant spelling *adjornatur* and the fuller phrase *et adjournatur* (and it is adjourned). These are equivalent in meaning. The variant forms are not substantively different; they reflect spelling inconsistency common in the old reports and Latin legal formulae of the period. Researchers should search for all three forms when conducting corpus searches across historical materials.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *adjournatur* at the close of a reported case should understand that the report is incomplete as a matter of procedural outcome. The case was not decided on the merits at that sitting; no final judgment was entered. What follows in the reports — if anything — may appear under a separate entry, a later term of court, or not at all.
The practical trap: a researcher who stops at a report ending in *adjournatur* may mistake an unresolved proceeding for a decided one. Early English reporters often printed successive stages of litigation as discrete entries, sometimes under slightly different case names or headings. The connection between an adjourned proceeding and its eventual resolution is not always obvious from the index.
The term is most frequently encountered in the older nominate reporters — the volumes cited by Burrill (Lord Raymond, Show., Leonard) — which cover the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus with materials from this period should treat *adjournatur* as a flag to search forward in the same reporter series for subsequent proceedings.
Contrast with *sine die* (without day), which signals a final or indefinite adjournment with no contemplated return date. A case ending *adjournatur* implies a future sitting was expected; a case dismissed or adjourned *sine die* does not.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: *adjournatur* means "it is adjourned" and was the conventional closing formula in the old reports when a case was continued. Burrill's is the most instructive, identifying the term's source (*adjournare*, to adjourn) and providing specific reporter citations — Lord Raymond, Show., and Leonard — that establish the term's prevalence in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century English reports.
Black's (both editions) confirms this usage and adds a useful contrast: when an adjournment was final, the phrase used was *sine die* rather than *adjournatur*. This distinction, though brief in the source dictionaries, carries real research significance and is worth preserving.
None of the source dictionaries address the civil law meaning noted in Black's 1st edition — a "calling into court; a summoning at an appointed time" attributed to Du Cange — in any depth. That civil law sense appears to be a secondary or historical usage unconnected to the common law reporting practice, and it is not corroborated by Burrill or Black's 2nd edition. Researchers encountering the term in civil law or ecclesiastical law contexts should treat that meaning cautiously.