Definition
A Latin adverb used in old legal practice meaning erroneously, or through error or mistake. The term appears in pleadings and writs — particularly in error proceedings — to characterize an act or decision as having been made incorrectly or mistakenly. It functions as a formal term of allegation rather than a substantive legal concept in its own right.
Common Confusion
ERRONICE should not be confused with the English adjective "erroneous" or the adverb "erroneously," though it is the direct Latin source of those terms. The confusion that arises in historical sources is primarily practical: researchers encountering ERRONICE in old reports or pleadings may fail to recognize it as a discrete Latin term of art and instead read it as corrupted or abbreviated English. It also should not be confused with ERROR as a substantive legal concept — ERRONICE is an adverbial characterization used in framing a writ or pleading, while ERROR names the ground of appeal or reversal itself.
Why It Matters in Research
ERRONICE is almost exclusively a term of old English and early American practice. Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century common law materials — Year Books, early English reports, or colonial and early republic American pleading records — are most likely to encounter it. Its principal context is the writ of error, where pleadings formally alleged that a lower court or officer acted erronice, laying the foundation for review.
The term has no living role in modern practice. Any appearance in post-nineteenth-century sources is either a direct quotation from an older authority or a scholarly discussion of historical pleading forms. Researchers should treat it as a signal that the surrounding passage is either historical in character or is drawing on older precedent.
The Burrill citation to Yelv. 83 — Yelverton's Reports, an English reporter covering cases from the early seventeenth century — fixes the term firmly in the early modern common law period. Researchers using Law Mind's corpus of historical dictionaries and reporters should note that ERRONICE will appear in that stratum of sources and rarely elsewhere.
One navigational trap: full-text searches for "erroneous" or "erroneously" in historical databases will not surface occurrences of ERRONICE. Researchers tracing the language of error in old pleadings should search the Latin form directly.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree closely. Black's (both editions) defines ERRONICE as a Latin term meaning erroneously or through error or mistake, with no elaboration beyond the translation. Burrill adds the contextual note "In old practice" and supplies the Yelverton citation, making his entry the most useful for researchers who need to anchor the term historically. Neither Black's edition identifies a specific procedural context, and none of the three sources discusses the term's role in writ-of-error pleading with any depth — a gap researchers should keep in mind. The entries collectively confirm that even by the time these dictionaries were compiled, ERRONICE was already a relic term being recorded for reference rather than active use.
Jurisdictional Note
The term derives from English common law practice and appears in English and early American legal materials. It carries no meaningful jurisdictional variation because it predates the divergence of American state practice from its English roots and was obsolete before that divergence became significant.