Definition
A Latin term meaning "to follow up," "to pursue," or "to prosecute." In legal usage, *frosequi* denotes the act of pressing forward with a prosecution or suit — to actively pursue a legal action to its conclusion. The term is most significant not as a standalone procedural term but as the root embedded in the compound phrase *nolle prosequi*, which expresses the opposite intention: a declaration by a prosecutor or plaintiff that they will not further pursue the action.
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Common Confusion
*Frosequi* is almost never encountered in isolation in legal practice or pleading. It appears chiefly as the second element of *nolle prosequi* — the familiar Latin phrase meaning "to be unwilling to prosecute." Researchers encountering *frosequi* alone in a historical text should understand it as the affirmative counterpart to that declaration: where *nolle prosequi* signals abandonment of a proceeding, *frosequi* signals its active continuation. The distinction is grammatical as much as legal: *nolle* is the infinitive of "to be unwilling," and its attachment to *prosequi* (an alternate form sharing the root of *frosequi*) creates the negation. Do not conflate *frosequi* with *prosequi* proper — they share a root and meaning but appear in different historical sources.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will rarely find *frosequi* standing alone in primary legal materials. Its practical significance is almost entirely as a key to unlocking the meaning of *nolle prosequi*, which appears constantly in criminal case records, court dockets, indictment files, and procedural treatises across centuries of common law practice. If you encounter *frosequi* in a historical legal text, the most productive next step is to locate the accompanying discussion of *nolle prosequi* — the two terms are definitionally paired, and no historical source treats *frosequi* at length without that cross-reference.
In Law Mind corpus research, the term is a navigational marker: its presence in a source signals that the source is engaging with prosecution procedure at a foundational level, likely in a Latin-heavy or early common law context. Texts defining *frosequi* independently — as Black's 2nd Edition Supplemental does — are typically glossary-style treatments designed to parse the components of compound Latin phrases for practitioners trained after Latin had faded from everyday legal use.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) Supplemental defines *frosequi* concisely as "to follow up or pursue; to sue or prosecute," and directs the reader immediately to *nolle prosequi*. This cross-reference is the entirety of the entry's analytical content — Black's treats *frosequi* as definitionally complete once its opposite is identified. No independent doctrinal significance is assigned to the affirmative term.
This reflects a broader pattern in historical legal dictionaries: Latin root terms that function primarily as components of compound legal phrases receive spare, derivative treatment. The substantive commentary — procedural rules, prosecutorial discretion, court approval requirements — lives entirely under *nolle prosequi*, not under the affirmative root. Researchers should not expect historical dictionaries to develop *frosequi* beyond this gloss.
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