Definition
A Latin term meaning "it is begun" or "it begins." In historical English common law practice, the incipitur was a method of entering pleadings on the issue-roll by recording only the commencement of those pleadings, rather than setting them out in full. When parties reached an issue, the plaintiff was responsible for entering the pleadings on the roll; the incipitur described the abbreviated form of that entry — recording the beginning of each pleading as a stand-in for the whole.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to a cluster of archaic procedural vocabulary tied to the common law issue-roll and the formal mechanics of pre-reform English pleading. Researchers encountering incipitur in primary sources should understand it as a practical shorthand device, not a substantive legal act — its significance is procedural economy, not legal consequence.
The term appears almost exclusively in English common law materials predating the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century, particularly those preceding the Common Law Procedure Acts beginning in 1852. After those reforms rationalized pleading and record-keeping practices, the occasion for entering an incipitur effectively disappeared, along with the issue-roll machinery that gave the term its meaning. American legal materials rarely use the term at all; where it appears in American sources, it is almost always in historical or comparative discussions of English practice.
Researchers working in pre-reform English procedural records should note that encountering "incipitur" on a roll does not indicate incomplete or defective pleading — it was a recognized and accepted form. The practical implication is that the roll itself will not contain the full text of the pleadings, and a researcher looking for complete pleading records will need to consult other sources or instruments from the same action.
The term also signals the general period of a document. Its presence suggests pre-Victorian English practice, helping researchers date and contextualize archival materials without explicit date references.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree entirely on the core meaning: incipitur denotes the entry of only the beginning of pleadings on the issue-roll, rather than their full text. There is no meaningful divergence among them on substance.
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the most procedurally specific, citing Archbold's Practice, Tidd's Practice, and Adolphus & Ellis — the standard authorities on English common law procedure of the era. Burrill's reference to Tidd's Practice (2 Tidd's Pr. 734) and Archbold (1 Arch. Pr. 177) points researchers toward the treatises where the mechanics of this practice were explained in operational detail. Anderson's adds the useful procedural sequence: originally all prior pleadings were entered on the issue-roll in full; the incipitur form was a later development that abbreviated this requirement. Both editions of Black's offer nearly identical, compressed definitions, evidently derived from the same source.
None of the historical sources place the term in any American context, and none discuss its disappearance — which is itself informative. The silence reflects that by the time these dictionaries were compiled, the practice was already a historical artifact being preserved for reference rather than active use.