Definition
An adverb used in criminal pleading and indictments to characterize an act as done with the intent and in the manner of a felony. To allege that an act was done "feloniously" is to charge that it was committed with a criminal mind and purpose appropriate to a felony — that is, with the deliberate intent to commit a serious crime, without legal justification or excuse.
At common law, the word was not mere surplusage. It was a term of legal art, mandatory in the language of an indictment for any felony. No substitute phrase or circumlocution could perform its function. The word operated both to signal the grade of the offense (distinguishing felony from misdemeanor) and to assert the requisite criminal intent. Without it, an indictment for a common-law felony was fatally defective.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "In a felonious manner; in a manner that constitutes a felony."
The common definition is not wrong, but it understates the historical legal weight the word carried. In ordinary English, "feloniously" reads as a simple adverb — a description of how something was done. In law, particularly in the common-law pleading tradition, it was a term of fixed technical necessity: a word whose presence or absence could determine whether an indictment stood or fell. The gap is between descriptive modifier and indispensable term of art.
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Common Confusion
"Feloniously" is sometimes treated as interchangeable with "with malice aforethought" or "willfully and intentionally." These are related but distinct charges. "Feloniously" establishes the felonious character of the act as a whole; the other phrases target specific mental states for specific crimes. In modern statutory practice, where indictments are often drafted under code requirements rather than common-law forms, the mandatory force of "feloniously" has eroded — but it retains independent significance when charging common-law felonies or when statutes incorporate common-law language.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers reading historical indictments, reported cases, or treatises on criminal pleading will encounter "feloniously" as a fixed formula rather than a descriptive word. Its presence signals that the drafter was working within the common-law indictment tradition, where a missing or misplaced "feloniously" could be assigned as reversible error on appeal. Its absence in a document purporting to charge felony is itself legally significant and worth flagging.
The word's force shifted as American jurisdictions reformed criminal procedure. Many states adopted statutory indictment forms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that relaxed or eliminated common-law pleading requirements. Researchers working across time periods should note whether a given jurisdiction had, at the relevant date, moved to code pleading — if so, the absence of "feloniously" carries different weight than it would in an earlier common-law jurisdiction.
In the Law Mind corpus, "feloniously" will appear densely in case law addressing indictment sufficiency, in treatises on criminal pleading (particularly discussions of Hale's Pleas of the Crown and Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown), and in appellate opinions reversing convictions on technical pleading grounds. It also surfaces in felony murder discussions, where the felonious character of the underlying act is an element of the homicide charge — see the Felony Murder Rule encyclopedia entry.
When reading nineteenth-century state court opinions, be alert to jurisdictional drift: some courts treated the omission of "feloniously" as curable by verdict or statute; others held it fatal regardless. The word's presence or absence in a historical document is a diagnostic marker of the pleading regime in force.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in strong agreement on the core point. Black's Law Dictionary (both editions), Bouvier, and Burrill all identify "feloniously" as an indispensable word in common-law indictments for felony, and all trace this requirement to Blackstone's Commentaries (4 Bl. Comm. 307). Bouvier is the most detailed, noting that no other word or circumlocution could supply its place and citing Hale, Bacon's Abridgment, and leading criminal case reporters in support. Burrill adds the Latin ancestor — felonicè — and notes the word was made synonymous with commission of an act "with a felonious intent." Black's Second Edition expands this gloss explicitly: "with the intention of committing a crime."
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry retrieved under this search is not a substantive entry for "feloniously" and appears to be a retrieval artifact; it does not contribute to the historical record on this term.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the erosion of the requirement under statutory and code pleading reforms. Their accounts reflect the classical common-law position, which remained accurate for common-law jurisdictions at their dates of publication but does not capture the later American divergence. Researchers should supplement these sources with jurisdiction-specific pleading treatises and annotated codes when working in a post-reform context.
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Jurisdictional Note
At common law and in early American practice, "feloniously" was universally required in felony indictments. Many American states reformed their criminal pleading requirements by statute, particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reducing or eliminating mandatory common-law formulas. Whether "feloniously" remains essential in a given jurisdiction today depends on that state's indictment statutes and case law; researchers should not assume the common-law rule applies without checking the relevant jurisdiction's current authority.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Homicide — Felony Murder Rule (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia): The felonious character of the underlying act is a defining element of felony murder liability; this entry explores how "feloniously" functions within that doctrine.
Felony Disenfranchisement and Restoration of Rights (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia): Background on the legal consequences that attach to felony classification, contextualizing why the distinction signaled by "feloniously" carries lasting civil consequences.
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