Definition
Auctionarie (Latin) refers to catalogues of goods prepared for public sale or auction. In historical legal usage, the term designated the written or printed lists identifying items offered for sale at auction, serving as the documentary record of goods available to prospective bidders.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older legal sources and historical legal dictionaries. Researchers encountering it in early English or ecclesiastical legal texts, court records, or estate administration documents should understand it as a reference to auction catalogues rather than to the auction proceeding itself or to an auctioneer as a person. The distinction matters: auctionarie describes the documentary instrument, not the event or the officer conducting it.
Because the term is Latin in origin and fell out of active English legal usage at an early date, it is unlikely to appear in modern statutes, case reporters, or secondary sources. Researchers working in probate records, inventory documents, or early commercial law materials are the most likely to encounter it. Cross-referencing against related Latin legal terms and historical glossaries will generally be more productive than searching modern databases.
The brevity of its treatment across legal dictionaries signals that the term carried narrow, specific meaning without significant doctrinal development. It did not generate a body of case law or evolve into a contested legal concept.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the only substantive entry among major historical legal dictionaries consulted: catalogues of goods for public sale or auction. No additional elaboration or illustrative authority is offered. The term's treatment is consistent with its character as a borrowed Latin term of art that entered English legal vocabulary descriptively rather than as a term generating litigation or statutory definition.
The absence of the term from other major historical dictionaries — including Bouvier's and Burrill's — is itself informative. It suggests the term was referenced for completeness in glossarial tradition rather than reflecting active courtroom or transactional usage in American or English common law practice.