Definition
A parliamentary formula used in the British Houses of Parliament to defeat a bill without a direct negative vote. When a legislative chamber moves that the next stage of a bill be taken up on "this day six months" (or, in some periods, "this day three months"), the practical effect is rejection: because Parliament does not sit continuously for six months without prorogation or dissolution, the named date will never arrive in the current session, and the bill dies. A bill disposed of in this manner cannot be reintroduced during the same parliamentary session.
The phrase functions as a polite fiction — a motion nominally postponing further consideration while operating as a permanent kill. It allows a chamber to express disapproval without the bluntness of a direct negative.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No general common-language entry exists for this phrase. Its use outside parliamentary contexts is negligible.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not defined as a general-language term.
The phrase is pure parliamentary and legal jargon. Its individual words carry ordinary English meaning, but the phrase as a whole is a technical term of art with no meaningful common-language counterpart. The "six months" is not literal — it is a parliamentary device, not a scheduling decision. A researcher encountering it in ordinary writing or speeches is almost certainly seeing a direct reference to parliamentary procedure.
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Common Confusion
This formula is occasionally confused with a simple adjournment or a genuine postponement. The distinction is critical: an adjournment postpones business to a specified date when the chamber will actually meet again. "This day six months" is designed to set a date the chamber will not reach in the current session, making it functionally final. Researchers should not read the phrase as indicating that a bill remained alive or under consideration.
The "three months" variant served the same purpose and appears in older sources alongside the six-months formula. The choice between three and six months reflected the stage of the session and the point in the calendar, not a difference in legal effect.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in British parliamentary history, constitutional law, or the history of legislation will encounter this phrase frequently in debates, committee records, and legal commentary from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Its meaning is not intuitive from the words alone, and misreading it as a scheduling motion rather than a rejection device will distort any account of a bill's legislative fate.
The formula appears in both Lords and Commons records. It was a favored device for blocking contentious measures — social reform bills, religious legislation, and politically sensitive proposals — without forcing members to cast a visible negative vote. The political significance of choosing this formula over a direct negative is itself a subject of historical scholarship.
In Law Mind corpus searches, this phrase will surface in treatises on parliamentary practice, British constitutional history, and comparative legislative procedure. Wharton's entries (cited by both Black's editions) reflect the nineteenth-century English practitioner's perspective; American legal dictionaries carry the term primarily because of its relevance to understanding English sources, not because it was ever adopted in American legislative practice. No U.S. state legislature or Congress uses or has used this device.
Researchers should also note that the procedural landscape of the British Parliament has changed substantially since the nineteenth century. The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 altered the Lords' power to block legislation, and modern parliamentary procedure has moved toward more transparent voting mechanisms. The "this day six months" formula, while not entirely obsolete, appears far less frequently in modern practice than in historical sources.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions carry near-identical entries, drawing directly on Wharton. The definition is consistent across editions: fixing a date six (or three) months hence for the next stage of a bill is one mode of rejection, and a bill so rejected cannot be reintroduced in the same session. Neither edition expands beyond this bare functional description, and neither situates the term within broader parliamentary history or explains the procedural mechanics that make the fiction work.
What the historical entries omit is notable. They do not explain why the named date operates as a final kill rather than a genuine postponement — that requires outside knowledge of parliamentary session lengths. They do not address the three-months variant with any analytical depth. And they cite Wharton without further elaboration, leaving researchers to consult that source for fuller treatment.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and its historical predecessors. It has no recognized counterpart in American federal or state legislative procedure. Researchers encountering the phrase in American legal sources will find it treated as a term of English law requiring explanation, not as a domestic practice.
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