Definition
A Latin adverb used in historical common law criminal pleading, translating roughly as "burglariously." The term was a required word of art in indictments charging burglary under English common law. Its presence in an indictment signaled that the alleged breaking and entering occurred with the specific criminal intent that distinguished burglary from lesser offenses. Without burglariter, a burglary indictment was technically deficient and vulnerable to challenge.
Common Confusion
Burglariter is not the crime itself, nor a synonym for burglary. It is a pleading term — an adverb describing the manner in which the act was committed as alleged in a formal charging instrument. Researchers encountering the word in historical indictments or case reports should read it as a term of formal art, not as a substantive legal element. Its absence from a document does not mean the underlying conduct was not burglary; it may simply mean the document predates strict pleading requirements or follows a jurisdiction's local form.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English criminal records from the 17th through early 19th centuries will encounter burglariter regularly in indictment texts and case reports addressing the sufficiency of pleadings. Its significance is almost entirely procedural: courts treated it as a vox artis — a word of art — meaning no paraphrase or circumlocution could substitute for it. An indictment that described the act as done "in the manner of a burglar" or "with burglarish intent" was not equivalent and could fail.
This rule had practical consequences that surface in case law. Challenges to indictments on the ground that burglariter was omitted or improperly placed generated reported decisions, and researchers tracing the procedural history of burglary prosecutions will find such challenges clustered in English reports from the late 16th through early 19th centuries. Burrill cites Cro. Eliz. 920 and 2 East 30 among others, providing anchors for locating that line of authority.
The term essentially disappears from American practice as criminal procedure modernizes. Most American jurisdictions adopted simplified pleading rules under which a plain-English statement of the offense replaced the Latin formulaic indictment. Researchers using 19th-century American sources should note that references to burglariter are typically backward-looking — citing the English common law rule as historical background rather than as operative pleading law.
The term is a useful marker for dating documents. Its presence in an indictment strongly suggests an English or early colonial American origin and a period when technical common law pleading was still strictly enforced. Its absence in otherwise archaic documents may itself be evidentiary.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core point: burglariter was a necessary word of art in old criminal pleading for burglary, translating as "burglariously." Black's (both editions) states this concisely. Burrill adds the most substantive detail, identifying the term explicitly as a vox artis and citing Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Com. 307), Coke, Cro. Eliz. 920, and 2 East 30 as authority for the proposition that no periphrasis could replace it.
The historical dictionaries do not address the term's disappearance from American practice, which is itself instructive. Their treatment is purely retrospective, situating burglariter within the English common law pleading tradition without tracing how that tradition was modified or abandoned in American jurisdictions. Researchers should not read the dictionary entries as implying the term retained operative force in later American courts.
Burrill's characterization — vox artis — is the most informative editorial note across all three sources and aligns with the broader common law doctrine that certain technical words in pleading carried legal meaning that could not be captured by equivalent plain-language substitutes.
Jurisdictional Note
The strict requirement for burglariter as a pleading term was an English common law rule. American jurisdictions generally moved away from technical Latin pleading requirements during the 19th century, and modern criminal codes in all U.S. jurisdictions specify burglary elements by statute without any requirement of Latin adverbial form.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Burglary; Criminal Pleading (Historical); Words of Art in Indictments