Definition
To dismiss an action, suit, or proceeding is to terminate it in court without a final judgment on the merits of the underlying controversy. A dismissal removes the case from the court's active docket, ending that particular proceeding—but it does not necessarily resolve the substantive dispute between the parties.
Dismiss operates across several distinct procedural contexts:
1. Dismissal of an action or suit: A court order terminating a case before a final merits determination. The court sends the matter out without further hearing. This is the core legal meaning and applies across civil and criminal proceedings.
2. Voluntary dismissal: A party—typically the plaintiff or prosecution—elects to withdraw the action. Depending on jurisdiction and procedural rules, this may be done as of right or only with court approval.
3. Involuntary dismissal: A court terminates the action over a party's objection, typically for procedural defects, failure to prosecute, lack of jurisdiction, or failure to state a claim.
4. Dismissal with prejudice: The action is ended and the party is barred from bringing the same claim again. Operates as a final judgment for res judicata purposes, even though no merits adjudication occurred.
5. Dismissal without prejudice: The action is ended but the party retains the right to refile. The termination is of the proceeding, not the underlying claim.
In criminal practice, dismiss carries additional significance: charges against a defendant are dropped by the court or at the prosecution's request, and the defendant is discharged from that proceeding.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To discharge or end employment; to order someone to leave; to reject or treat as unworthy of serious consideration; to dispel from one's mind.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To send away; to give leave of departure; to cause or permit to go; to put away; also to discard or remove from office or service.
The common meaning captures the general idea of sending something away, but the legal meaning is more precise and consequential. In law, to dismiss is not merely to reject or set aside—it is a formal procedural act with immediate docket consequences and, depending on whether the dismissal is with or without prejudice, potentially permanent claim-preclusive effects. A researcher who treats "dismissed" as simply meaning "rejected" will miss these downstream implications entirely.
Common Confusion
Dismiss versus quash: Both terminate a proceeding or remove something from court consideration, but they operate on different objects. To quash is typically applied to writs, subpoenas, indictments, or orders—it annuls or voids the instrument itself. To dismiss applies to actions, suits, or charges as a whole. Burrill's Law Dictionary specifically flags this distinction, citing Mississippi authority. The two terms are not interchangeable, and historical sources that use one where the other is expected can mislead researchers about what, precisely, was terminated.
Dismiss versus nonsuit: Historically, nonsuit was the common law mechanism by which a plaintiff's failure to appear or proceed caused the action to be terminated. Dismiss originated in equity (chancery) practice and migrated into law courts over time. In modern usage the terms have largely converged in many jurisdictions, but older sources—particularly pre-merger equity and common law materials—use them in technically distinct ways. A dismissal in a chancery record means something different from a nonsuit in a common law record of the same era.
Why It Matters in Research
The most important research trap with dismiss is the with-prejudice/without-prejudice distinction. Historical sources—including all five dictionary sources compiled here—define dismissal as the end of the proceeding, not a final judgment on the merits. That framing is accurate but incomplete for modern research: a dismissal with prejudice now functions as a claim-preclusive event even without merits adjudication. Researchers reading older precedent on the res judicata effect of dismissals must verify whether the source jurisdiction and era treated dismissal as categorically non-preclusive, because modern doctrine has moved significantly.
The equity origins of the term matter for corpus research. When dismiss appears in pre-nineteenth-century English or early American records, it is almost certainly chancery language. Common law courts of the same period would more typically speak of nonsuit, retraxit, or discontinuance. Finding "dismissed" in a common law record from that era warrants closer scrutiny—it may signal equity practice, a borrowed usage, or a later transcription.
In criminal practice, dismissal of charges occupies a different procedural universe than civil dismissal. The constitutional dimensions of double jeopardy attach differently depending on when in the proceeding the dismissal occurs and what prompted it. Researchers using dismiss across civil and criminal materials should not assume that doctrine developed in one context transfers cleanly to the other.
The motion to dismiss is now the dominant procedural vehicle in both civil and criminal practice for testing the legal sufficiency of a pleading before the case proceeds. Research into any modern case will almost certainly intersect with this motion. See the Encyclopedia cross-reference below.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five historical sources agree on the core meaning: dismiss is to send away, to cause removal from court, to end a proceeding without further hearing. All sources also agree on the equity origins—Bouvier, Anderson, and Burrill each explicitly note that the term was borrowed from chancery practice and later extended to courts of law.
Burrill adds the most nuance among the historical sources, flagging the dismiss/quash distinction and tracing the Latin root (dimittere), which helps clarify the original sense of releasing or sending forth rather than annihilating. Anderson emphasizes that the term refers to the final ending of a suit as a proceeding, distinguishing it from a final judgment on the controversy—a distinction that remains doctrinally important.
What the historical sources do not address: the with-prejudice/without-prejudice distinction, which is central to modern practice, receives no treatment in any of these entries. Researchers relying solely on these sources will find them accurate as far as they go but silent on the claim-preclusive consequences that modern courts and practitioners treat as the most important feature of a dismissal. The historical sources also predate the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938), which systematized voluntary and involuntary dismissal in ways that transformed American civil practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal practice under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure draws a clear line: a second voluntary dismissal of the same claim operates as an adjudication on the merits (with prejudice) even if the first was without prejudice. State courts vary in how and whether they follow this two-dismissal rule. Researchers working across federal and state materials should not assume uniform treatment of voluntary dismissal consequences.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Pretrial Motions — Motion to Dismiss (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)