Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning "to go out" or "to issue." In legal usage, *exire* describes the act of a writ issuing or going forth from a court. The related form *exit* (third-person singular present: "it has gone forth") appears as a docket notation indicating that a particular writ has been issued. The phrase "exit of a writ" means simply the issuing of that writ.
The term appears most commonly in two related forms:
1. *Exire* — the infinitive, meaning to go out or to issue.
2. *Exit* — the docket entry form, indicating issuance of a writ.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Exit" in ordinary English means a way out, or the act of leaving a place.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Exit was used both as a stage direction meaning "he goes out" and as a noun meaning a passage or departure.
The gap is specific: in legal records, *exit* is not a description of physical departure but a technical notation of procedural issuance. A reader encountering *exit* in a historical court docket should not read it as indicating that a person or thing left, but that a writ was formally put into circulation by the court.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in historical English court records — particularly plea rolls, writ registers, and docket books — will encounter *exit* as a standard clerical notation. Misreading it as a colloquial note about departure rather than a formal procedural marker will produce errors in reconstructing the timeline of litigation. The word signals a discrete procedural event: the moment a writ passed from the court's control into the hands of the sheriff or other officer for execution.
The term belongs to the vocabulary of writ practice, which was central to common law procedure from the medieval period through the nineteenth century. Because writ practice has been substantially replaced by modern civil procedure, *exire* and its forms are largely dormant in contemporary usage but remain essential for researchers reading older English and early American court records.
Note that *exire* as an infinitive form appears most often in treatise and statutory Latin, while *exit* is the working form found in actual records. A researcher searching for the concept in primary sources should search for *exit* rather than *exire*.
*Exire* should also be distinguished from the related procedural term *exitus*, which carries a broader set of meanings including issues, profits, and outcomes — a false cognate trap in Latin legal documents.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the cleanest definition, tracing the term to its Latin roots (*ex*, from, and *ire*, to go) and citing Fleta, a thirteenth-century English legal treatise, as authority. This grounds *exire* firmly in medieval English legal practice.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law connects *exire* and *exit* explicitly to writ practice and docket notation, making clear that *exit* as a docket entry signals issuance rather than any other kind of departure. Anderson also links *exire* briefly to the related term *exequatur* in the same passage — a connection that reflects the broader Latin vocabulary of procedural permission and authorization in historical courts, though *exequatur* is a distinct term with distinct applications.
Neither source elaborates on the procedural consequences of *exit* notation — for example, what legal effect the issuance of a writ had on the running of limitations or the rights of parties. Researchers needing that level of procedural detail should consult Glanvill, Bracton, or Fleta directly, or secondary treatments of English writ procedure.
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Jurisdictional Note
*Exire* and its forms belong primarily to the tradition of English common law and early American courts that inherited English writ procedure. The term is essentially obsolete in modern American and English practice following the displacement of the writ system by code pleading and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
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