Definition
Latin phrase meaning "and he did so" or "and so he did." Used in historical pleading and Year Book records to confirm that a party performed an act previously ordered, required, or alleged. The phrase typically appears as a formulaic notation in the record of proceedings, affirming compliance or completion of a commanded or pleaded action.
Common Language
This is pure Latin legal formula with no meaningful common English counterpart. No entry in Wiktionary or Webster's 1913 is applicable. The phrase does not appear in ordinary usage outside of legal and ecclesiastical Latin contexts. No COMMON LANGUAGE section is warranted.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this phrase will find it almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal records, most often in the Year Books — the manuscript and printed reports of English court proceedings running roughly from the late thirteenth century through the early sixteenth century. The phrase functions as a shorthand attestation within the pleading roll or report, not as a substantive legal doctrine. Its significance is procedural and archival rather than doctrinal.
Several practical research traps apply:
First, do not confuse the phrase with a holding or rule of law. When et sic fecit appears in a Year Book entry, it marks a procedural moment — confirmation of compliance — not a legal conclusion the researcher can extract and apply. Researchers mining Year Book entries for doctrine must read past the formula to the substantive exchange.
Second, the phrase is one of a cluster of Latin connective formulas (et sic, et ideo, et sic de die in diem) that appear throughout medieval pleading records. Without familiarity with this formulaic vocabulary, a researcher may misread the logical structure of the entry or miss the point at which the narrative transitions from command to completion.
Third, all three source dictionaries cite a single authority: Yearbook Pasch. 9 Hen. VI, fol. 17 — a report from the reign of Henry VI, likely from the 1430s. This uniformity signals that the phrase had little occasion to appear in later doctrine or reporting, as Latin pleading conventions were progressively replaced following English procedural reforms. Researchers should not expect to find the phrase in post-seventeenth-century materials.
For Law Mind corpus users working in the common law pleading and procedure materials, Year Book sources, or early equity records, familiarity with this class of Latin formula is baseline literacy. The phrase is not indexed meaningfully in most modern legal research tools precisely because it carries procedural rather than doctrinal content.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: all three define the phrase identically as "and he did so" and cite the same Year Book passage. This unanimity reflects the phrase's narrow, uncontested function — there is no dispute in the historical record about what it means or how it was used.
What the historical dictionaries do not tell the researcher is anything about the procedural posture in which the phrase arose: what kind of compliance was being recorded, whether it followed a court order or a party's own pleading, or how the notation interacted with the surrounding record. The entries are essentially glosses — sufficient to translate the phrase, insufficient to contextualize it. Researchers needing fuller understanding of how such formulas operated in Year Book pleading practice should consult secondary scholarship on medieval English procedure and Year Book methodology rather than the dictionary record alone.
Burrill's entry prefixes the phrase with "L. Lat." — Law Latin — a useful reminder that this is the technical register of legal Latin rather than classical or ecclesiastical usage, and that it may behave differently from cognate phrases in non-legal Latin sources.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is specific to English common law practice and appears in materials predating the American legal system. It has no recognized usage in American or other common law jurisdictions outside of historical scholarship.