Definition
A Latin term from the civil law with two related but distinct senses:
1. To beat or strike another person — specifically, to make physical contact without necessarily inflicting pain. In this sense, pulsare describes the physical act underlying a civil law wrong akin to what common law systems would classify as battery or the tortious element of assault.
2. To accuse, charge, or proceed against a person at law — that is, to pursue a legal action or complaint against another. In this usage, pulsare functions as a term of procedural initiation, connoting the act of formally pressing a claim or laying an accusation before a tribunal.
The two meanings are connected by their root concept of forceful contact or confrontation — physical in the first sense, legal in the second.
Common Confusion
The civil law distinction between pulsare (to beat without giving pain) and a more serious physical assault involving injury is meaningful. Burrill expressly preserves this nuance, defining pulsare as beating "without giving pain" and directing readers to the companion term pulsatio. Researchers relying only on Black's first or second edition, which omit the "without pain" qualification, may miss this gradation. The term is also easily conflated with the broader concept of iniuria in Roman and civil law, which encompasses a range of affronts to personal dignity beyond mere physical contact.
Why It Matters in Research
Pulsare is primarily a term of Roman and civil law significance; it will not appear in common law sources and should not be expected in English case reporters or statutes. Researchers encounter it most often in:
— Glossaries and commentaries on Roman law, particularly discussions of the actio iniuriarum, the civil law cause of action for personal affronts;
— Early civil law treatises and Civilians' writings that made their way into Scottish, Louisiana, South African, or other mixed-jurisdiction legal traditions;
— Historical legal dictionaries themselves, where the term appears as a translational aid for reading Latin texts.
The procedural meaning — to proceed against at law — is worth flagging when reading Latin pleading records or civil law procedural texts, because pulsare in that context signals the commencement of an action rather than describing a substantive wrong. Conflating the two meanings in a documentary source can cause significant misreading.
Researchers in Louisiana civil law history, Scots law, or Roman-Dutch law contexts are most likely to need this term. In those jurisdictions, the civil law substratum means that Roman-origin vocabulary retained practical relevance longer than in purely common law systems.
The Calvin citation (Calvinus, Lexicon Juridicum) referenced in all three source dictionaries is a genuine seventeenth-century Latin legal lexicon by Johannes Calvinus (Johann Kahl), a standard reference work for civil law Latin. Burrill cites it as "Calv. Lex." — this is the same source, abbreviated differently.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core dual meaning: physical beating and legal accusation or proceeding. The notable divergence is that Burrill adds the qualification "without giving pain" to the first meaning and redirects readers to pulsatio — a distinction the two Black's editions omit entirely. This makes Burrill the more precise source for the Roman law technical sense of pulsare as a category of minor physical contact, distinguishable from more injurious forms of striking.
None of the three dictionaries contextualizes pulsare within the Roman law framework of iniuria or explains the procedural mechanism by which the term operated as a verb of legal action. Researchers needing that broader context must turn to civil law treatises or Roman law scholarship rather than relying on any of the dictionary entries alone.
The consistency across editions of Black's is unremarkable here — the second edition reproduces the first nearly verbatim, with the addition of the Latin label, suggesting no independent research was done between editions on this entry.
Jurisdictional Note
Pulsare is a term of Roman and civil law with no direct common law equivalent or usage. It is most relevant to research in jurisdictions with civil law roots — Louisiana, Quebec, Scotland, South Africa — and to historical legal scholarship engaging Latin primary sources.