Definition
A Latin-derived term of medieval legal usage meaning a trial or judicial examination. Historically, it carried a secondary technical application in accounting contexts: *examen computi* referred to the balance or reckoning of an account — the settling or striking of figures to determine what is owed or owing.
The term appears rarely in English-language legal writing and, where it does appear, functions primarily as a Latinate synonym for trial or inquiry. Its accounting sense survives in older pleading texts but is largely absent from modern legal usage.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): examination; inquiry.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Examination; inquiry. [R.] 'A critical examen of the two pieces.' — Cowper."
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow but worth noting. In ordinary English, *examen* is a slightly archaic synonym for examination or critical scrutiny. In legal sources, the term carries the more formal weight of a *trial* — a judicial proceeding — rather than mere inquiry. The accounting compound *examen computi* further limits the legal term to a specific technical sense that the common definition does not capture.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *examen* in historical pleadings, Latin maxims, or older English common law texts should not read it as a general synonym for examination or investigation. In those contexts it typically signals a formal trial or judicial proceeding. The compound *examen computi* appears in pleading treatises in connection with accounting actions — particularly writs of account — and refers to the audit or balancing phase of those proceedings, distinct from the initial demand for an accounting.
The primary trap is anachronistic reading: modern readers may interpret *examen* as meaning a deposition, interrogation, or pre-trial examination of witnesses, when the historical legal sources use it to mean the trial itself or, in the accounting context, the settlement of a reckoned account.
Researchers working in equity practice or early common law pleading should also be alert to the distinction between *examen* (trial; balance of account) and the broader tradition of examination of witnesses in chancery, which operated under different Latin terminology. Do not conflate this term with the chancery practice of taking written interrogatories, which appears in the sources under separate headings.
The reference shared across all three source dictionaries — Townshend's *Pleadings* at page 223 — is the primary authority cited. Researchers tracing the accounting usage should begin there.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement: *examen* means a trial, and *examen computi* means the balance of an account, with all three directing the reader to Townshend's *Pleadings* at page 223. The uniformity across sources suggests the term was received without controversy into English legal lexicography and that no competing or divergent definition existed in the Anglo-American tradition.
None of the historical sources elaborate on the procedural context for *examen computi* beyond the single phrase and citation. This brevity reflects the term's narrow usage: it was not a term of art generating litigation or doctrinal dispute, but a descriptive Latin phrase appearing in pleading contexts without independent legal content requiring extended definition.
The second edition of Black's reproduces what appears to be a typographical error ("Baoamen computi"), confirming it is a reprint of the first edition's language rather than an independent revision. Researchers should treat both editions as reflecting the same source.
Jurisdictional Note
*Examen* and *examen computi* are terms of historical English common law and early American pleading practice. They carry no distinct meaning in civil law jurisdictions and are not terms that appear in modern statutory or regulatory usage in any U.S. jurisdiction.