Definition
A Latin term from old legal practice meaning "to be ignorant of" or, more specifically in procedural usage, to ignore or reject a bill of indictment. The term functioned as the verb form underlying the grand jury endorsement *ignoramus* — the formal declaration by which a grand jury rejected a presented bill as insufficient to warrant prosecution. In practice, *ignorare* describes the act of rejection itself: the grand jury's exercise of its power to decline to find a true bill.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Ignorare* is not a standard English word. It is the Latin infinitive meaning "to not know" or "to be unacquainted with," and is the root from which English "ignore" and "ignorance" derive.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not entered as an English word; recognized as Latin origin for "ignorant," "ignore," and related English derivatives.
The gap worth noting: In ordinary Latin, *ignorare* carries the sense of simple not-knowing — a passive state of unawareness. In old English legal procedure, the term acquired an active, procedural meaning: the deliberate rejection of a bill by a grand jury. The legal usage is not about ignorance in the common sense but about a formal institutional act of dismissal.
Common Confusion
*Ignorare* is easily conflated with *ignoramus*, but the two are grammatically and functionally distinct. *Ignoramus* is the first-person plural present indicative ("we do not know" or "we ignore"), which grand juries endorsed on rejected bills as their formal verdict of rejection. *Ignorare* is the infinitive — the underlying verb — and does not itself appear as a procedural endorsement. Researchers encountering *ignorare* in historical sources are reading legal commentary or definitional text, not a verbatim jury endorsement.
Why It Matters in Research
*Ignorare* is a term of art found almost exclusively in historical legal dictionaries, Latin legal glossaries, and commentary on grand jury procedure predating the nineteenth century. Researchers will not encounter it as a standalone procedural term in case law or statutes; it surfaces instead in definitional and explanatory passages where authors are unpacking the etymology or meaning of *ignoramus*.
The practical research value is indirect: understanding *ignorare* clarifies why *ignoramus* meant what it did — and why grand jury rejection was framed as an act of not-knowing rather than outright acquittal. This distinction mattered to early common law courts because rejection of a bill carried different legal consequences than a verdict of not guilty at trial.
Researchers working in colonial American records, early English quarter sessions materials, or pre-nineteenth-century grand jury proceedings should treat *ignorare* as a pointer term: when it appears, it is directing the reader toward the fuller procedural entry at *ignoramus*. Burrill's cross-reference makes this routing explicit.
No meaningful jurisdictional variation attaches to *ignorare* itself, as the term did not survive into modern procedural codes or statutes in any operative form.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the shelf sources, and it is characteristically concise: *ignorare* is identified as Latin, located in "old practice," and defined by dual meanings — to be ignorant, and to ignore or throw out a bill of indictment — before cross-referencing *ignoramus*. This entry does precisely what a well-designed historical dictionary entry should do: it preserves the term for researchers encountering it in primary sources while efficiently routing them to the operative procedural concept.
No additional historical dictionary support is available from the surveyed sources. The absence is itself informative — by the time most nineteenth-century legal dictionaries were compiled, *ignorare* had already receded to pure etymology, with *ignoramus* carrying the full weight of the procedural doctrine.