Definition
A Latin term from the civil law meaning "or more." The expression was understood in classical Roman legal usage to denote not an indefinite or unlimited quantity, but a small or modest amount beyond a stated figure. It functions as a qualifier in legal instruments, pleadings, and statutory texts to indicate that a number or sum mentioned is a floor rather than a ceiling, while simultaneously signaling that the intended excess is limited in scope rather than open-ended.
Common Confusion
"Plurisve" might be read by modern researchers as a straightforward additive phrase equivalent to "or more" in contemporary English usage — meaning any amount above the stated figure, with no upper bound. This is incorrect in its original civil law context. The classical gloss preserved in Burrill draws from the Digest (Dig. 50.16.192) and makes clear that the phrase carried a limiting implication: the "more" was understood to be a small or nominal excess, not an unrestricted one. A researcher encountering "plurisve" in a translated civil law text and treating it as open-ended amplification will misread the passage.
Why It Matters in Research
The practical research risk with "plurisve" is mistranslation by approximation. Modern editors and translators of civil law materials frequently render the phrase as "or more" without preserving the classical gloss that restricted its scope. A researcher working through Digest commentary, early English equity materials influenced by Roman doctrine, or any text in the ius commune tradition needs to treat "or more" as a potentially loaded phrase whenever the underlying Latin is or may be "plurisve."
The Digest citation that Burrill preserves — Dig. 50.16.192 — falls within the title De verborum significatione, the Roman law title devoted to the legal construction of words and phrases. This placement is significant: the compilers of the Digest categorized "plurisve" as a term requiring interpretive guidance precisely because its natural reading was misleading. Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should be alert to this when tracing arguments about the construction of numerical terms in civil law-derived jurisdictions.
The phrase also appears in close proximity in Burrill's entry to two companion maxims — "Plus peccat author quam actor" and "Plus valet unus oculatus testis quam auriti decem" — which, while not definitionally connected to "plurisve," appear consecutively under the "Plus/Pluri-" headword cluster. Researchers should not conflate these distinct entries, which Burrill sequences alphabetically rather than thematically.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical shelf source for this entry. Burrill's treatment is brief but pointed: he records the civil law provenance, supplies the Digest citation, and flags the interpretive restriction (not indefinite, but small). This gloss is the most important piece of information in the entry and is easy to overlook because the phrase's surface meaning suggests the opposite.
No entry for "plurisve" appears in Black's Law Dictionary across its major editions, nor in Bouvier's Law Dictionary. This absence is itself informative: the term remained largely within the specialist domain of civil law scholarship and did not migrate into the common law dictionaries that shaped American legal vocabulary. Researchers using Law Mind sources outside the civil law tradition are unlikely to encounter the term as a live operative phrase, though it may appear in historical quotation or academic commentary on Roman sources.
Jurisdictional Note
"Plurisve" is a term of Roman civil law and is not operative vocabulary in common law jurisdictions. It may appear in Scottish, South African, Louisiana, or Quebec legal materials that draw on the ius commune tradition, and in scholarly commentary on the Digest across any jurisdiction.