Definition
In old English law, a wound. Plaga referred specifically and most properly to a wound made by a cutting instrument — what modern medicine would call an incised wound. The term appears in Latin pleadings and indictments to describe the physical injury inflicted upon a victim, typically in the context of assault and battery charges. In pleading practice, plaga and vulnus (the more general Latin word for wound) were treated as synonymous, though plaga was the more common and preferred term in formal indictments.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in standard modern English usage.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A stripe of color.
The Webster's 1913 definition reflects a completely different Latin root than the legal term. The legal plaga derives from the Latin for wound or blow; the color-stripe meaning comes from a distinct classical usage referring to a band or zone. Researchers encountering plaga in legal sources should not be misled by the Webster's definition, which has no connection to the legal term.
Common Confusion
Plaga and vulnus were formally treated as synonymous in old English pleading, but Burrill draws a technical distinction: plaga was properly reserved for incised wounds — those made by cutting instruments — while vulnus was the broader term for wound in general. In practice, this distinction collapsed in indictments, where plaga served as the standard pleading word regardless of instrument. A researcher reading an old indictment should not assume a cutting weapon was necessarily involved simply because plaga appears; the word had become conventional rather than descriptive.
Why It Matters in Research
Plaga is a term encountered almost exclusively in Latin pleadings, early common law indictments, and treatise discussions of criminal assault from the medieval and early modern English periods. It does not survive into modern legal usage as a term of art.
Researchers working in Bracton, Fleta, or early Year Books will encounter plaga as the standard pleading word for wound in assault-related charges. Understanding that it was a pleading convention — not a precise medical descriptor by the time of widespread use — prevents misreading the severity or nature of an alleged injury from the word alone.
The formal Latin pleading formula cited by Burrill (fecit ei insultum et quandam plagam ei fecit in tali loco) is worth recognizing as a standard pleading structure: it tracks the elements of assault (insultum) and the resulting wound (plaga) with a general locative placeholder. This formula appears with variations across medieval English criminal pleadings.
Because plaga dropped out of use as English gradually replaced Latin in legal proceedings (accelerated by statutes requiring English pleadings), it will not appear in post-17th-century sources in ordinary legal contexts. Its presence in a document is itself a dating clue.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary historical dictionary source for this term among standard Anglo-American legal dictionaries, and his treatment is brief but precise. He correctly identifies the Bracton and Fleta sources and draws the technically important distinction between plaga as an incised wound and vulnus as the general term — a distinction Fleta preserves more carefully than actual indictment practice did.
Burrill's citation to Coke (5 Co. 121) for the synonymy point is consistent with Coke's general treatment of pleading sufficiency in assault and battery cases, where the choice between plaga and vulnus was held not to be a fatal variance. This is a useful practical note for researchers reading early reports: quibbling over plaga versus vulnus in indictment challenges was resolved in favor of equivalence.
No significant divergence exists among historical dictionary sources on this term because coverage is so sparse — it is a narrow Latin pleading term that most dictionaries simply omit. Burrill's entry represents essentially the full historical dictionary record for Anglo-American purposes.
Jurisdictional Note
Plaga as a legal term is specific to the old English common law tradition and the Latin pleading practice of English courts. It does not appear as a term of art in civil law or continental legal systems in the same procedural context, though the Latin word itself is pan-European. American legal sources will not use this term in any post-colonial context.