Definition
An archaic Latin verb used in medieval English legal texts meaning to enlarge, release, or set at liberty. In its primary legal sense, elargare describes the act of freeing a prisoner or expanding the conditions of confinement — literally, to make wide or broad. The term appears in records of imprisonment, bail, and custody, where it denoted the formal act of releasing a person from restraint, whether from prison, from the custody of a sheriff, or from other forms of legal confinement.
Why It Matters in Research
Elargare is a term a researcher will encounter almost exclusively in medieval and early common law sources — particularly in Fleta and similar treatises of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It does not carry forward into modern legal vocabulary in any meaningful way, having been displaced by ordinary English equivalents such as "enlarge" (in its older legal sense of release), "discharge," and "liberate."
Two navigational points matter for corpus researchers:
First, the English legal verb "to enlarge" — meaning to release a prisoner or extend time — is the direct descendant of elargare. When reading post-medieval English legal materials, particularly through the eighteenth century, a reference to enlarging a prisoner or enlarging a party out of custody is the functional continuation of this Latin term. Researchers tracking the history of bail and pretrial release should treat elargare and "enlargement" as part of the same conceptual thread.
Second, the term's appearance in Fleta (lib. 1, c. 24) connects it to the treatment of sheriffs' duties and the conditions under which prisoners could be lawfully released or held. Fleta, written circa 1290, drew heavily on Bracton and was itself a synthesis of contemporary legal practice. Any researcher using Fleta as a primary source should be aware that elargare is used in a precise procedural sense in those passages — it is not casual vocabulary but a term of art describing a specific custodial act.
Researchers will not find elargare in Coke, Blackstone, or the later common law commentators by that Latin name, but the concept it encodes persists. The absence of the Latin form in later sources should not be read as the absence of the doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry: elargare, from the Latin e (out) and largus (large, wide), meaning "to enlarge; to widen," with the sole citation to Fleta, lib. 1, c. 24, §§ 8 and 10. Burrill's gloss is accurate but minimal. The entry functions as a finding aid to the Fleta passages rather than a substantive doctrinal explanation, which is typical of how Burrill treats archaic Latin terms of limited ongoing practical significance.
No other historical dictionary in the Law Mind shelf appears to independently develop this term. Its treatment is essentially single-source, and researchers should consult the Fleta passages directly for context rather than relying on dictionary synthesis.
The Latin root connection — largus meaning broad or generous, carrying a sense of opening out or freeing — is genuinely instructive here, as it explains why the same word could denote both physical release from custody and the broadening or extension of legal conditions. This dual sense (release outright, or release into wider liberty) appears in how English legal usage later employed "enlargement" in both bail contexts and in the extension of time or terms.
Jurisdictional Note
Elargare is a term of medieval English law with no parallel development in other common law jurisdictions. It has no application in civil law systems. Research relevance is confined to English legal history and the primary sources of the early common law.