Definition
A Latin term from old English legal practice meaning, variously: (1) the oral exchange between parties to a lawsuit, being the spoken forerunner of what later became formal written pleadings; (2) an imparlance — that is, a request for time to answer or negotiate before pleading; (3) a plaint, declaration, or the first pleading of a plaintiff; and (4) more generally, any statement, saying, or affirmation made in a legal proceeding. The term surfaces in medieval English court records and legal texts and had largely fallen out of active use before the modern era, surviving primarily in historical sources and maxims.
A related phrase, loquela sine die, denotes a postponement or respite to an indefinite time — the equivalent of an adjournment with no return date set.
The associated maxim, loquendum ut vulgus; sentiendum ut docti, translates as: "We must speak as common people; we must think as learned people" — a canon of legal construction cautioning that words in instruments should be read in their ordinary popular sense, while their legal operation is understood with technical precision.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in general modern English use; survives primarily in Latin ecclesiastical and academic contexts meaning "speech" or "language."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; the root loqui (to speak) underpins common English derivatives such as loquacious, eloquent, and colloquy.
The gap here is not between a common and a legal meaning so much as between the root's broad Latin sense and the technical, procedural meanings the term accumulated in English legal practice. A reader encountering loquela in a medieval court record or legal treatise would not be well served by the Latin root alone; the term carried distinct procedural freight — oral pleading, imparlance, initial complaint — that differed depending on the specific context and period.
Common Confusion
Loquela is most likely to be confused with imparlance. The two terms substantially overlap: historical sources (Cowell, Blount, Rapalje & Lawrence) use them interchangeably in the sense of a party's request for time to talk over a matter before pleading. However, Burrill's treatment reveals a broader application for loquela, covering the initial plaint or declaration itself — something imparlance does not reach. Researchers encountering either term in early English records should not assume a clean one-to-one equivalence.
Why It Matters in Research
Loquela is not a working term in modern litigation but is an essential term for anyone reading pre-modern English court records, Year Books, Bracton, or Fleta. Several distinct procedural concepts traveled under this single label at different moments and in different texts, meaning the same word in two sources may point to different procedural stages.
The overlap with imparlance is the primary trap. When Cowell and Blount equate loquela with imparlance, they are describing one slice of the term's meaning — the pre-pleading dialogue or request for delay. Burrill, drawing on Bracton and the Registrum Omnium Brevium, captures a different slice: the initial plaint or declaration, i.e., the plaintiff's opening move. A researcher must read the surrounding context to determine which sense is operative.
Loquela sine die appears in records of postponements and continuances. Identifying this phrase correctly is necessary to distinguish a permanent or indefinite stay from a routine adjournment to a fixed date. It is a recognizable marker in early English court rolls that a matter was suspended without a return date.
The maxim loquendum ut vulgus; sentiendum ut docti has an independent doctrinal life in statutory and contractual interpretation, cited in Coke's reports and still referenced in discussions of ordinary-meaning canons. A researcher following this maxim from its appearance in a loquela entry in a historical dictionary into interpretive doctrine should treat it as a freestanding canon rather than as an application of loquela proper.
Corpus researchers tracing the development of pleading from oral to written forms will find loquela a useful marker of the oral-pleading era. Its gradual disappearance from the record corresponds to the formalization of written pleadings — making it a rough chronological signal when dating legal documents.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core meaning — oral exchange, early pleading, imparlance — but diverge instructively in emphasis and scope.
Black's (both editions) leads with the oral-altercation sense and ties loquela to the evolutionary story of pleading: oral altercations became the issue, and the issue became what we now call pleadings. This framing is useful for legal historians but omits the term's use as a plaint or initial declaration.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the most compressed, essentially collapsing loquela into imparlance and adding the sine die phrase and the maxim. It treats the terms as interchangeable without flagging the broader usage.
Burrill, drawing directly on Bracton and the Registrum Omnium Brevium, provides the richest coverage. His entry recovers the plaint-and-declaration sense, cites Magna Carta for the affirmation usage, and connects the term to the procedural architecture of the court baron. This is the most textually grounded treatment and the most useful for primary-source research. The Bracton citation (fol. 363b) and the reference to Reeves' History of English Law (1 Reeves' Hist. 248) give researchers traceable anchors.
What all four sources effectively miss is a clear account of why the term carried so many meanings simultaneously. The oral origins of English pleading meant that the conversation between parties, the request for time to continue that conversation, and the formal first statement of a claim were not sharply distinguished procedural events — they were aspects of a single spoken process. Loquela traveled with that ambiguity built in.
Jurisdictional Note
Loquela is a term of English legal history. It does not appear in American statutes or court rules as an operative term, and it has no civilian-law equivalent in use. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or colonial American records may encounter it in transplanted English procedural contexts, but its meaning will track the English sources rather than any local development.