Definition
An adverb of pleading used exclusively in criminal indictments for piracy. When a defendant was charged with piracy at common law or under statute, the indictment was required to allege that the accused acted "piratigally" — that is, in the manner of a pirate. The term carried no independent substantive meaning beyond its function as a term of art: its presence signaled to the court that the offense charged was piracy proper, as opposed to robbery, murder, or other crimes that might coincidentally occur at sea. The word is not found in general usage and has no life outside the technical pleading context that created it.
Common Language
This term has no common English counterpart. It does not appear in standard dictionaries as an ordinary word. It is pure legal jargon generated entirely by the formal pleading requirements of criminal practice and should be understood exclusively within that context.
Common Confusion
Piratigally is sometimes loosely equated with "feloniously" or "burglariously" — the adverbial terms of art required in indictments for felony or burglary, respectively. The confusion is understandable: all three are manufactured adverbs serving the same structural function, signaling to the court the precise nature of the offense charged. But they are not interchangeable. Each term is tethered to its specific offense, and substituting one for another was treated as a fatal defect in the indictment. An indictment for piracy that omitted "piratigally" could be challenged on the ground that it failed to charge the offense with the requisite technical precision.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost entirely a historical artifact of common law criminal pleading. Researchers encountering it will almost certainly do so in one of three contexts: (1) historical indictments or form books for piracy prosecutions, (2) treatises on criminal pleading addressing the technical sufficiency of indictments, or (3) cases where a conviction for piracy was challenged on grounds that the indictment was defectively drawn.
The key research trap is treating this as a term with substantive legal content. It has none. Its significance is entirely procedural — it is a pleading word, not a word of definition. Its absence from an indictment was a technical defect; its presence told the reader nothing about what specific acts were alleged. Researchers analyzing historical piracy indictments should note that courts took the omission of such adverbs seriously: the requirement was not mere formalism but reflected the common law rule that a criminal charge must be stated with sufficient certainty to allow the defendant to know exactly what offense was alleged and to plead any future acquittal or conviction in bar of a second prosecution.
The citation in Black's 2nd Edition Supplemental to "3 InsL 112" likely references a volume of institutional law or a criminal law treatise of the period; researchers should be cautious that this abbreviation is not definitively resolved here and should verify the source independently in context.
Modern piracy prosecutions — whether under 18 U.S.C. § 1651 or analogous statutes in other jurisdictions — do not require this adverbial formulation. The strict common law pleading rules that gave rise to terms like "piratigally," "feloniously," and "burglariously" have been substantially relaxed or abolished in most jurisdictions by modern rules of criminal procedure. Researchers working on contemporary piracy law will not encounter this term in operative documents.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) Supplemental is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment is appropriately minimal: "A technical word which must always be used in an indictment for piracy." This single sentence captures the full scope of the term's legal significance. There is nothing to synthesize across multiple sources because the term's function is so narrow. What historical dictionaries as a class tend to understate is the reason why such adverbs were mandatory — namely, the strict common law rule of pleading that required each offense to be named and characterized with precision adequate to inform both the defendant and the court of the exact charge. That broader context is essential for understanding why "piratigally" existed at all and why its omission was treated as a material, not merely technical, defect.
Jurisdictional Note
The requirement of adverbial terms of art in criminal indictments was a feature of English common law pleading carried into early American practice. Jurisdictions that have adopted modern rules of criminal procedure (such as those modeled on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure) generally no longer require such formulations. The term retains relevance only in the context of historical English and early American piracy prosecutions.