Definition
In old European law, to assault; to make a physical attack upon another person. The term is a Latin variant of *assalire* and appears in medieval legal records as an alternative form of the same root concept. It describes the act of falling upon or setting upon another, the conduct that underlies modern assault doctrine.
Why It Matters in Research
SALLIRE is an archaic Latin form encountered in medieval European legal texts, particularly in records drawn from feudal and ecclesiastical sources. Researchers working in early English and Continental legal manuscripts may encounter this spelling as a variant of *assalire*. The two forms are functionally interchangeable in historical documents, and a source index that lists one may not cross-reference the other.
The primary research trap is treating SALLIRE and ASSALIRE as distinct legal concepts when they are not. Both point to the same underlying act — assault in the broad, physical sense of the medieval law — and both ultimately feed into the doctrinal history of assault in common law. Burrill cites Spelman as the authority connecting the two forms, making Spelman's *Glossarium Archaiologicum* the natural place to verify usage in any specific manuscript context.
Researchers tracing the etymology of "assault" through Latin intermediaries should expect variation in spelling across different scribal traditions. SALLIRE appears to represent a contracted or regional form, dropping the initial prefix *as-* that appears in *assalire*. Neither form should be read in isolation from the broader family of related terms (*insultus*, *assultus*, *assalimentum*) that populate medieval pleading records.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is brief: SALLIRE means to assault, is equivalent to *assalire*, and the authority is Spelman. This is the full extent of treatment across available historical dictionary sources — no further elaboration appears in Burrill, and the term does not receive independent treatment in other standard historical legal dictionaries.
The brevity is itself informative. SALLIRE was not a term of art with independent doctrinal weight; it was a scribal variant encountered in archival sources rather than a concept litigated in its own right. Researchers should not expect case law or statutory usage organized around this specific spelling. Its value is paleographic and genealogical — it connects a manuscript reading to a recognized legal concept — rather than substantive.