Definition
Latin. Literally, "that he go thence without a day." A formula historically entered in the record of a judgment rendered for a defendant — in both civil and criminal proceedings — signifying that the defendant is dismissed from court entirely, without any further day assigned for appearance, continuation, or adjournment. The action is over; the defendant is discharged and need not return.
In criminal practice, the phrase was the standard record notation accompanying a defendant's acquittal or discharge, signaling that the court's jurisdiction over that defendant in that matter has concluded with finality.
In civil practice, the phrase marked the end of an action in the defendant's favor, distinguishing a final disposition from a mere continuance or adjournment to a future day.
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Common Language
This is pure legal Latin with no common-language counterpart. The phrase has no meaningful usage outside legal and court-record contexts. COMMON LANGUAGE section omitted.
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Common Confusion
EAT INDE SINE DIE is sometimes loosely equated with a general continuance or dismissal without prejudice. These are distinct. A continuance assigns a new day — the matter returns. A dismissal without prejudice leaves the door open for refiling. EAT INDE SINE DIE, by contrast, signals that no future day will ever be assigned in that action: the proceeding ends absolutely, with the defendant discharged. In criminal acquittal contexts, double jeopardy principles reinforce this finality. Researchers should not read this phrase as a procedural pause; it is a terminus.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a formulaic Latin phrase of the common law record, most commonly encountered in older English and American court records, Year Books, and early American reports through the nineteenth century. Researchers working in manuscript court records, early printed reports, or any historical source predating modern procedural rules should recognize it as a term of art marking final discharge in favor of a defendant.
Several traps exist for corpus researchers:
First, transcription errors are common. Variant spellings appear in historical records — "eat inde sine die," "eant inde sine die," "let him go without day," and hybrid Latin-English formulations. The English equivalent "go hence without day" or "dismissed without day" should be treated as functionally synonymous when encountered in American sources.
Second, the phrase appears in both civil and criminal contexts in older sources, but by the time American dictionaries were consolidating common law vocabulary in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, it was primarily cited in criminal practice discussions. Researchers reading a civil record that uses this phrase should not assume criminal proceedings were involved.
Third, the phrase is formally obsolete under modern procedural codes. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and state equivalents replaced Latin record formulas with plain-language judgment entries. A researcher who finds this phrase in sources from the twentieth century onward is almost certainly reading a historical quotation, a law review treatment, or a court construing old records — not a live procedural term.
Fourth, the phrase connects directly to the Year Books cited by Burrill, meaning its roots run to medieval English practice. Any research tracing procedural lineage from colonial American courts back through English common law will encounter this formula as a thread of continuity.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge cleanly on meaning and agree without significant divergence: this is a record formula signaling final dismissal of a defendant without any future day assigned.
Burrill provides the most technically complete treatment, tracing the phrase to Year Book sources (Michaelmas and Trinity terms, 1 Edward II) and Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Com. 316, 399), and explaining its signification in the context of recorded judgment. His note that "the corresponding English words still are" used — writing in the mid-nineteenth century — confirms that the plain English equivalent was already displacing the Latin formula in American practice before the Civil War.
Bouvier is characteristically terse but accurate, citing Dane's Abridgement as authority and glossing the phrase simply as dismissal without further day.
Rapalje & Lawrence add the useful clarification that the dismissal is "without any further continuance or adjournment," sharpening the distinction from a procedural pause.
The Black's entries (both editions) confine the phrase primarily to criminal practice acquittal contexts, which likely reflects the phrase's more persistent usage in criminal record-keeping by the time those editions were compiled.
No historical dictionary entry addresses the double jeopardy implications of the phrase in criminal acquittal contexts — an analytical gap that later procedural scholarship and case law would fill.
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Jurisdictional Note
The formula originates in English common law and was received into American courts as part of the general common law inheritance. By the mid-nineteenth century it was used across common law jurisdictions in the United States, though the English equivalent was already competing with the Latin. Modern procedural codes in all U.S. jurisdictions have superseded Latin record formulas. The phrase retains significance in historical record interpretation but has no operative procedural force under current rules in any U.S. jurisdiction.
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