Definition
A Latin maxim-term of medieval English and Roman law meaning "to meet," "to run against," or "to stop or bar." In legal usage, *occurrere* appears almost exclusively as a component of longer Latin maxims rather than as a freestanding term of art. Its operative significance lies in its contribution to doctrinal phrases—most prominently *nullum tempus occurrit regi* ("no time runs against the king"), where the verb carries the technical sense of a statute of limitations "running against" or "meeting" a legal right so as to extinguish or bar it.
The term is not used in modern legal practice as an independent concept; it survives only in the classical maxims into which it was incorporated.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *occurrere* in primary sources will almost always find it embedded within a Latin maxim, not deployed as a standalone term. The critical navigational task is identifying which maxim is at issue and then pursuing that maxim's doctrine directly.
The most important downstream term is *nullum tempus occurrit regi*, which expresses the common law rule that statutes of limitations do not run against the Crown (or, in American law, the sovereign). That doctrine has a substantial and independent life in both English and American case law. Researchers who stop at *occurrere* itself will miss the substantive material, which is indexed under the maxim, not the verb.
In historical corpus materials—particularly in treatises and legal dictionaries from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries—Latin maxims were frequently listed under their first word or their most significant word. *Occurrere* may appear either as the dictionary headword directing the reader to the maxim, or embedded within the maxim text. Cross-referencing both entry points is advisable when searching older indexes and digests.
Because Latin legal vocabulary was largely displaced from common law practice across the nineteenth century, *occurrere* in modern sources signals either a historical quotation, a maxim being invoked by a court for doctrinal authority, or a scholarly treatment of Roman or medieval law. Context will determine which.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides a compact entry that correctly identifies the three operative senses—"to meet," "to run against," and "to stop or bar"—and directs the reader immediately to *nullum tempus occurrit regi*. This cross-referential treatment is characteristic of how mid-nineteenth-century legal dictionaries handled Latin verbal elements: they acknowledged the term's existence but treated the maxim as the unit of legal meaning.
Burrill's entry reflects an accurate understanding of how the word functioned in legal Latin. The three glosses are not alternatives in ordinary translation; they represent a progression from the literal ("to meet") to the figurative legal ("to run against," as a limitation period runs) to the consequential ("to stop or bar," the legal effect of that running). This compression is useful for understanding how the term could simultaneously describe a temporal process and its legal outcome.
Older historical dictionaries that predated Burrill—including Cowell's *Interpreter* and Jacob's *Law Dictionary*—addressed the maxims in which *occurrere* appears without necessarily lemmatizing the verb independently. Researchers consulting seventeenth- and eighteenth-century lexicographic sources should search under the maxim rather than the verb.