Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "and so further," "and so on," or "and so forth." Used in legal pleadings and formal instruments to indicate that a series of acts, conditions, or obligations continues in the same pattern without requiring exhaustive enumeration. The phrase signals that what has been described repeats or extends in like manner beyond the last stated instance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The phrase has no current common English usage outside legal and scholastic contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The phrase remained confined to Latin legal and ecclesiastical writing throughout the period covered by that dictionary.
Editorial note: Because the phrase is pure Latin legal jargon with no living common counterpart, the gap between legal and everyday meaning is total rather than subtle — the term is simply unknown outside formal legal and historical contexts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval and early modern English legal records will encounter this phrase primarily in pleadings and procedural instruments where a sequence of duties, payments, or actions was understood to repeat. Its function is shorthand: rather than spelling out every iteration of a recurring obligation, the drafter stated the pattern once and appended et sic ulterius to signal continuation.
The critical research trap is treating the phrase as mere decoration or filler. Where it appears, it carries substantive meaning: the obligation or sequence it trails does not terminate with the last enumerated instance. Missing this can cause a researcher to misread the scope of a feudal service, a series of distresses, or a chain of pleading steps as finite when the instrument intended them to be ongoing.
The phrase appears alongside similar Latin shorthand terms — et sic de anno in annum, et cetera, and quousque — that collectively define the temporal or sequential reach of an obligation. When researching a document that uses et sic ulterius, look for those companion phrases to reconstruct the full picture of what was intended to continue and for how long.
The sole substantive citation across all three source dictionaries is Fleta, lib. 2, c. 50, § 27, a thirteenth-century English legal treatise. This narrow citation base confirms that the phrase's primary home in the legal literature is medieval common law procedure. Researchers working in post-seventeenth-century sources will rarely encounter it in operative legal text, though it may appear in treatises and commentaries that quote or explain earlier instruments.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: all three define the phrase identically as "and so on; and so further; and so forth" and all three cite exclusively to Fleta, lib. 2, c. 50, § 27. There is no divergence across these sources on meaning, application, or scope.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is how the phrase interacted with pleading practice — specifically, whether its use was mandatory to extend a series or merely conventional. They treat the phrase as a fixed translational matter rather than a term of legal art with operational consequences. Researchers should not infer from the brevity of these entries that the phrase was inconsequential; the terseness reflects the dictionaries' focus on translation rather than doctrinal analysis.
Fleta itself — the cited source — is a Latin treatise on English law dating from approximately the 1290s, likely written by a royal judge or clerk and modeled in part on Bracton. Its procedural sections are the primary context in which this phrase carries interpretive weight.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is specific to the Latin pleading tradition of English common law and jurisdictions that inherited it. It does not appear as a term of art in civilian or continental legal systems, and it has no meaningful modern application in American or Commonwealth statutory drafting.