Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning to end, determine, or dispose of judicially. To terminare a matter was to bring it to a conclusion through judicial decision — to decide and settle it. The term appears most often in procedural contexts describing the resolution or non-resolution of pleadings and causes before a court, particularly in relation to matters adjourned or left undecided before the justices.
Common Language
This is pure legal Latin with no meaningful common English counterpart. The modern English verb "terminate" derives from the same root and carries a related sense of ending or concluding, but terminare as a legal term of art belongs entirely to the technical vocabulary of medieval English legal procedure and does not require comparison with ordinary English usage.
Why It Matters in Research
Terminare is a term of procedural significance in old English common law sources, not substantive law. Researchers encountering it in medieval and early modern legal texts should read it as a signal about the status of a proceeding — specifically, whether a matter was brought to a final judicial determination or left unresolved. The Bracton passage cited by Burrill illustrates the distinction between matters adjourned (atterminatæ) and those actually decided (terminatæ): a plea adjourned before the justices of the bench but not determined was to remain without day — that is, the court had no further date set for it, leaving it effectively in suspension.
Several research traps attach to this term. First, the related form atterminare (to adjourn or put off to a term) is easily confused with terminare itself, though their procedural meanings run in opposite directions — one postpones, the other concludes. Second, the participial forms terminatæ and non terminatæ carry distinct procedural weight and should not be read interchangeably. Third, oyer and terminer — the commission familiar in later English and American legal history — embeds the same root in its second element (terminer, to determine), and researchers working across time periods should recognize that terminare underpins that commission's meaning even when the Latin form itself is not present.
The term is primarily relevant to researchers working in Bracton, early English Year Books, and the procedural literature of the medieval common law courts. It appears less frequently in the post-medieval period as Latin legal pleading declined, and is largely absent from nineteenth-century American legal sources except as a historical reference. Corpus searches should account for variant spellings and inflected forms: terminatæ, terminatum, terminanda, and non terminatæ will all appear depending on grammatical context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the principal English-language lexicographic treatment, drawing directly on Bracton (fol. 355b) for illustration. The entry captures terminare's core procedural sense accurately but is cut short in the surviving text — the second illustrative passage breaks off mid-sentence, leaving incomplete Burrill's intended demonstration of the term's use in connection with matters deferred by the justices on account of the difficulty of certain points. This truncation is a known feature of some Burrill editions and means the full doctrinal context of that second passage is not recoverable from the dictionary alone; researchers should consult Bracton directly for the complete text.
No other source dictionaries were provided for this entry. The absence of coverage in later dictionaries such as Black's or Bouvier's reflects the term's obsolescence as active legal vocabulary by the nineteenth century — both American dictionaries were composed for practitioners, not medievalists, and Latin procedural terms of this vintage were largely outside their scope.
Jurisdictional Note
Terminare is a term of English medieval law and has no independent doctrinal life in American jurisdictions. Its relevance to American legal research is historical and etymological only, primarily through the oyer and terminer commission which was transplanted into colonial and early American practice.