Definition
In old English law and practice, *ire* is a Latin term meaning "to go." It appears in legal records and pleadings to signify that a party is dismissed from court or discharged from legal restraint. The term functions as a verb of motion in the procedural vocabulary of early English courts, describing the moment a person is formally released from the court's hold — whether acquitted, discharged, or otherwise freed from pending process.
The phrase *ire ad largum* — to go at large — is the most commonly encountered form, indicating that a person is released without condition or confinement.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To anger, to irritate.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Anger; wrath. [Poetical.]
The gap here is total. In ordinary English, ancient and modern, *ire* is a noun or verb of emotion — anger, rage, or the act of provoking it. In old English legal Latin, the word carries none of that meaning whatsoever. It is the Latin infinitive "to go," appearing in a procedural context entirely divorced from passion or sentiment. A researcher encountering *ire* in a medieval plea roll or early English law report should not read it as an emotion word. It describes movement and discharge, not feeling.
Common Confusion
*Ire* in legal Latin should not be confused with the English word "ire" appearing incidentally in the same historical sources. Old legal manuscripts and early printed reports mix Latin and English fluidly, and a reader unfamiliar with law Latin may misread procedural Latin as English vocabulary. Additionally, *ire* should be distinguished from related terms of dismissal: *eat inde sine die* (let him go hence without day, i.e., final dismissal) is a fuller phrase describing the same discharge event, while *ire* alone is the bare verb from which such phrases are constructed. See also *ibimus* (we go), a related Latin form noted by Burrill.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term whose significance is almost entirely navigational. Researchers working in medieval English legal records, Year Books, or early common law reports will encounter *ire* embedded in Latin procedural formulae. Its importance lies in recognizing it as a term of discharge or dismissal — a moment in litigation that can be legally significant — rather than stumbling over it as an unfamiliar word.
The primary trap is the language-switching problem. Early English legal records routinely shift between Latin, Law French, and English within a single document. *Ire* is Latin, short, and easily overlooked or misidentified. Missing it means missing the procedural posture of a case at a critical juncture.
Researchers using Burrill should note that the entry is cross-referenced to *eat inde sine die* and *ibimus*, which are the richer entries for understanding the full vocabulary of dismissal and discharge in early English practice. *Ire* alone is the raw Latin root; the doctrinal weight sits in the compound phrases.
No meaningful jurisdictional variation exists for a term of this vintage. It belongs to a period of English legal practice before American or Commonwealth divergence was legally relevant.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the only historical dictionary source here, and its entry is minimal but precise. It correctly situates *ire* in "old English law and practice," provides the core meaning (to go; to be dismissed from court or discharged from legal restraint), and offers the key phrase *ire ad largum* with a citation to Plowden's *Commentaries* (Plowd. 37). The cross-references to *eat inde sine die* and *ibimus* are useful navigational pointers within Burrill's own system.
What Burrill does not provide — and what no single-entry treatment of a root Latin term can provide — is a full account of how *ire* phrases function within pleading doctrine or what legal consequences attached to different forms of discharge. For that, researchers must move to the substantive entries on dismissal, discharge, and the *sine die* doctrine.