Definition
In historical legal procedure, "elongates" (also appearing as "elongats" or "eloigns") is the return made by a sheriff in response to a writ of homine replegiando, reporting that the prisoner or person to be replevied has been removed, conveyed away, or otherwise placed beyond the sheriff's reach and jurisdiction. The return itself — the formal statement of that fact — is sometimes called an "elongata." The word functions as a term of art identifying a specific sheriff's return, not a general verb.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Third-person singular simple present indicative of the verb "elongate" — meaning to make longer or to stretch out.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Elongate" — to lengthen; to extend; to draw out to a greater length.
The gap between common and legal meaning is complete. In ordinary English, "elongates" describes a physical or spatial extension. In legal procedure, "elongates" (or "elongats") is a formal Latin-derived term of art naming a specific sheriff's return — it conveys nothing about length or stretching, but rather the act of removing a person from the reach of legal process. A researcher encountering this word in a historical legal document and reading it as the common verb will fundamentally misread the document.
Common Confusion
"Elongates" as a sheriff's return is closely related to, but distinct from, "eloignment" and "eloigned." Eloignment is the act itself — the removal of a person or goods beyond the court's or sheriff's jurisdiction. "Eloigned" describes the condition of the person so removed. "Elongates" (or "elongats") is the specific formal return the sheriff makes reporting that eloignment has occurred. Historical sources sometimes use these terms interchangeably or inconsistently, which can obscure which specific procedural moment is being described.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English common law records, writs practice, or legal history will encounter this term almost exclusively in the context of the writ de homine replegiando — a writ directing the release of an imprisoned person on pledges, analogous in function to habeas corpus. When a sheriff returned "elongats," it triggered specific procedural consequences: the pledges who had guaranteed the prisoner's appearance could be subjected to further process, and the matter took a distinct procedural path.
The term essentially disappears from active legal use after the consolidation and eventual abolition of the old forms of action in the nineteenth century. Researchers should expect to find it in English Year Books, early American colonial and state court records that tracked English forms, and treatises on common law pleading and writs. It will not appear in modern procedural materials. Any appearance in a post-nineteenth-century source is likely either historical quotation or scholarly discussion.
The term can be silently corrupted in transcribed records — appearing as "elongats," "elongatus," "elongatas," or variants — because it derives from Latin court returns that copyists rendered inconsistently. Cross-check against the underlying writ (de homine replegiando) to confirm context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) addresses this term under the related entry "Eloigned," defining the return as the sheriff's report that the party to be replevied "has been eloigned, or conveyed out of his jurisdiction," citing Blackstone's Commentaries at 3 Bl. Comm. 129. Blackstone is the primary classical authority here and describes the mechanics of the writ and the sheriff's return in detail.
Historical legal dictionaries treat this term narrowly and consistently — all ground it in the de homine replegiando context. What they do not address is the practical procedural significance of the return in terms of what happened next to the pledges and the imprisoned party. Researchers needing that downstream procedural history must go to Blackstone directly or to treatises on common law writs and pleading, such as those by Fitzherbert or later commentators on English practice.
Jurisdictional Note
This term belongs to English common law procedure and was carried into early American colonial and state court practice in jurisdictions that adopted English forms of action. It has no meaningful modern jurisdictional variation because the underlying writ and the return practice are obsolete across all common law jurisdictions.