Definition
To remove to a distance; to carry off or away. Elongare is the Latin root of the English legal term "eloign" and appears in medieval English legal procedure as the act of removing goods, a person, or distrained property beyond the reach of legal process or the officer executing it. The term describes the wrongful or obstructive act of placing something so far away that it cannot be replevied, returned, or seized by judicial authority.
In practical terms, elongare was most commonly associated with distress proceedings: when a distrainor carried off distrained goods to a location unknown or inaccessible, the defendant seeking replevin was frustrated in recovering the property. The law developed remedies to address this obstruction, including the writ de proprietate probanda and related process.
Common Confusion
Elongare and eloign are the same concept — the Latin form and its anglicized derivative, respectively. Researchers encountering "eloign" in English common law reports and "elongare" in Latin pleadings or treatises are reading the same operative act. Neither term should be confused with the modern colloquial sense of "elongate," which implies only physical lengthening without any legal or obstructive dimension.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources predating the 18th century and in treatises organized around the old forms of real and personal actions. Researchers will encounter elongare most often in:
— Texts on distraint and replevin, where the act of carrying goods beyond reach gave rise to specific procedural consequences and writs.
— Latin pleadings and formularies from the medieval and early modern period, where the term appears in its Latin form rather than the anglicized "eloign."
— Fleta and similar institutional treatises (Burrill cites Fleta, lib. 2, c. 45, § 3), which are the primary habitat of the term in systematic legal writing.
The key research trap is terminological fragmentation: the same legal concept appears as elongare in Latin sources, eloign or eloignment in English common law texts, and occasionally as "conveying away" or "carrying off" in plain-language summaries. A search on any single form will miss the others. Cross-reference all three when tracing the doctrine through historical materials.
Because elongare belongs to a cluster of terms tied to distraint procedure — a body of law substantially displaced by modern statutory remedies — it rarely surfaces in post-19th-century legal literature except in historical or comparative treatments.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary dictionary source for this term, and his entry is characteristically compressed: he identifies the Latin derivation (longum iter, a long journey), supplies the Fleta citation, and cross-references eloign. This reflects the standard treatment in historical law dictionaries, which tend to handle elongare as a lemma pointing toward eloign rather than developing the term independently.
What Burrill's entry does not do is explain the procedural consequence of elongare in distraint law — specifically, that when goods were eloigned, the distrainee could pursue expanded remedies, and the distrainor could be compelled to answer for the removal. Researchers should not expect dictionary entries of this era to supply that procedural context; it must be sought in the treatise literature, particularly in discussions of replevin.
The appended note on "Elsewhere" in Burrill's entry is an artifact of alphabetical proximity in the original dictionary and has no substantive connection to elongare.
Jurisdictional Note
Elongare is a term of English common law procedure and appears in English and early American sources. It has no meaningful life in civil law jurisdictions. American courts largely ceased using the term as common law forms of action were abolished in the 19th century, though the underlying concept of eloignment survived in some replevin statutes.