Definition
A Latin legal directive meaning "let him be freed" or "let him be discharged." Used historically in legal proceedings as a formal command or notation indicating that a person held in custody or under legal obligation is to be released. The term functioned as an operative word in writs, orders, or court records authorizing discharge from detention, bond, or other legal constraint.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term will almost exclusively find it in older English and American court records, writs, and procedural documents. Its appearance in a historical record signals a moment of formal discharge — whether from imprisonment, recognizance, or a pending legal obligation — and locates the entry point for tracking what happened to a party after that point in proceedings.
Because paoeatur appears only in Black's 2nd Edition Supplemental material and not in the main body of most legal dictionaries, researchers should treat its absence from standard reference works as expected rather than as evidence of a transcription error or variant spelling. It belongs to a class of Latin command-form terms (along with mittatur, exeat, and similar directives) that appear as brief notations in court minutes and writs rather than as developed legal concepts.
Researchers working with colonial-era or early republic court records should be alert to the possibility that paoeatur appears in abbreviated or phonetically rendered form in manuscript records, given that court clerks varied considerably in their command of Latin. If a source record contains a notation that appears garbled but contextually suggests a discharge or release, paoeatur is a plausible candidate for the intended term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.), Supplemental, provides the sole dictionary entry identified for this term: "Lat. Let him be freed or discharged." The definition is minimal — a translation gloss rather than a developed legal explanation — which is consistent with how Black's treated Latin directives of this type. No elaboration on procedural context, applicable courts, or relationship to specific writs is provided.
The absence of this term from the main body of Black's and from competing historical dictionaries such as Bouvier's or Burrill's suggests it was either a specialized or infrequently litigated term, or one whose practical function was absorbed into more general discharge language as courts moved away from Latin pleading forms. Researchers should not assume comprehensiveness from the single-source record; the term's operational meaning is consistent with the broader category of Latin court-directive language well documented in other sources.
Jurisdictional Note
As a Latin directive associated with pre-modern pleading practice, paoeatur is not in active use in any contemporary jurisdiction. Its relevance is confined to historical legal research, primarily in courts that retained Latin pleading forms — English common law courts and American courts prior to the statutory abolition of Latin in pleadings, which occurred at varying times across jurisdictions through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.