Definition
An adverb of pleading used in common law indictments for burglary, signifying that the breaking and entering was done with the character and intent of a burglar — that is, in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony therein. The word does not describe a freestanding legal concept so much as it performs a technical function: its presence in an indictment signals that the charge is burglary and not merely trespass, unlawful entry, or some lesser offense. At common law, the word was considered indispensable. An indictment that omitted it was defective on its face, regardless of how fully the surrounding language described the act.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): As a burglar; in order to burgle.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): With an intent to commit burglary; in the manner of a burglar.
The common meaning is essentially descriptive — it tells you how something was done. The legal meaning is narrower and more formal: the word functions as a term of art in pleading, not merely as a modifier. A drafter could describe every element of burglary in plain English and still fail to satisfy the common law requirement if this precise word was absent. That gap — between descriptive adequacy and technical sufficiency — is the core distinction.
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Common Confusion
BURGLARIOUSLY vs. FELONIOUSLY: Both are common law pleading words required in criminal indictments, and both appear together in the standard burglary formula ("feloniously and burglariously broke and entered"). They are not interchangeable. "Feloniously" signals the grade of the offense (a felony rather than a misdemeanor); "burglariously" signals the specific nature of the crime (burglary as distinguished from other felonious entries). Dropping one while retaining the other did not cure an indictment's defect at common law.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term matters almost exclusively in the context of historical criminal pleading. A researcher working with pre-codification indictments — particularly those from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — will encounter this word as a near-universal fixture in burglary charges. Its presence is diagnostic: if you see it, the charge is burglary, not housebreaking, breaking and entering, or a related offense.
The major research trap is applying modern pleading expectations to historical materials. Under modern codes of criminal procedure in virtually every U.S. jurisdiction, the rigid common law requirement that specific technical words appear verbatim has been abolished or substantially relaxed. Statutes typically require that an indictment state the offense in plain language sufficient to give notice; the exact word "burglariously" is no longer mandatory. A researcher who finds a nineteenth-century indictment lacking this word and assumes the charge was defective is on solid historical ground; a researcher who applies the same logic to a twentieth-century statutory indictment is not.
The term also flags the transition point in jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction codification. Many state codes explicitly eliminated the common law pleading requirement during the nineteenth century, and the dates of those reforms vary. Searching historical session laws for the moment a jurisdiction dropped the technical pleading requirement can help date documents or establish when local practice diverged from English common law.
For corpus researchers, this word functions as a reliable search anchor. Because it appears in a fixed formula — "feloniously and burglariously broke and entered the dwelling-house in the nighttime" — encountering it in a historical document reliably locates burglary indictments, charge books, and pleading manuals. The Latin predecessor, burglariter, serves the same anchor function in earlier English sources.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on this term, which reflects both its narrow technical function and the relative stability of the common law pleading rule it embodies. Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Bouvier's, and Burrill's all define the word primarily as a pleading requirement rather than as a substantive legal term, and all treat its presence in an indictment as mandatory at common law.
Bouvier's provides the most practically useful entry, quoting the standard formula and citing Wharton's Criminal Pleading for the proposition that no circumlocution will substitute. The reference to Coke (4 Co. 39; 5 Co. 121) and Croke Elizabeth (Cro. Eliz. 920) anchors the rule firmly in early English authority. Burrill notes the Latin predecessor burglariter, a useful pointer for researchers working in older English or ecclesiastical records.
Black's 2nd edition adds case citations — Lewis v. State, 16 Conn. 34 and Reed v. State, 14 Tex. App. 665 — that illustrate American courts enforcing the common law requirement well into the nineteenth century. These citations are genuinely useful for tracing how long individual jurisdictions maintained the technical pleading rule after codification began.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the dissolution of the requirement under modern pleading codes. They were written when the rule was still operative, and none of them flags the coming statutory reforms. Researchers should treat these entries as accurate for their era and supplement with statutory history for any jurisdiction where the timing of codification matters.
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Jurisdictional Note
The common law requirement that "burglariously" appear verbatim in a burglary indictment was largely displaced in U.S. jurisdictions by statutory reform, most occurring during the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Modern state and federal pleading rules generally require notice rather than magic words. Researchers working across the antebellum/postbellum divide should identify the specific jurisdiction's reform date, as practice varied considerably — some states retained the technical requirement long after others abandoned it.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Burglary — Elements and Degrees, The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia
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