Definition
A Latin term meaning "being sick" or "being indisposed." In older legal reporting practice, *zegroto* (or *ægroto*) appeared as a parenthetical notation in case reports to indicate that a named judge was absent from the bench due to illness at the time the matter was heard or decided. It is not a substantive legal doctrine but a reporter's notation of record — a piece of procedural bookkeeping that explains why a judge's name does not appear among those participating in a reported decision.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The term does not appear in modern general English dictionaries.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The Latin root *aeger* (sick, ill) was familiar to educated readers of the period, but *zegroto* as a standalone word did not circulate in general English usage.
The term functions exclusively as a legal-clerical notation. A researcher encountering it in a historical report should read it as a functional absence marker, not a legal concept with doctrinal weight.
---
Common Confusion
The term is sometimes rendered in historical reports as *ægroto*, *egroto*, or *zegroto* — variant spellings reflecting inconsistent transcription of the Latin ligature *æ* into English print. Black's 2nd edition cites the form *egroto* as it appears in 11 Mod. 179 ("Holt egroto"), referring to Chief Justice Holt's absence from a reported proceeding. Researchers searching historical databases should run multiple spelling variants, as optical character recognition and manual transcription of early modern reports frequently render the ligature differently.
---
Why It Matters in Research
This term matters almost exclusively to researchers working with early English case reports — particularly the nominative reporters of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A few practical points:
**Judicial participation questions.** When a reported decision carries significant weight and a researcher is trying to establish which judges concurred or dissented, a *zegroto* notation explains an otherwise unexplained judicial absence. Misreading or overlooking the notation could lead a researcher to incorrectly assume a judge participated, or to question the accuracy of the report itself.
**Variant spellings in digitized corpora.** As noted above, the *æ* ligature creates real search problems in digitized historical sources. The Law Mind corpus, where it includes early modern English reports, may surface this term in any of several spellings. Searching only for *zegroto* without also searching *ægroto* and *egroto* risks missing relevant instances.
**Not a term of art in modern practice.** No modern legal system uses this notation. It has no procedural equivalent in contemporary court reporting, where judicial absences are recorded through formal recusal or non-participation designations. Researchers should not attempt to apply the term analogically to modern sources.
**Corpus connections.** The term connects most naturally to research into the history of English legal reporting, the nominative reporter tradition, and the procedural practices of the King's Bench in the period roughly 1680–1730. Chief Justice Holt's tenure (1689–1710) is the period most likely to generate encounters with this specific notation.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd ed.) provides the only shelf-source entry for this term, and it is brief: "Being sick or indisposed. A term used in some of the older reports. 'Holt egroto.' 11 Mod. 179."
The citation to 11 Mod. 179 is a reference to volume 11 of the *Modern Reports* (also cited as *Mod.* or *Mod. Rep.*), one of the nominative reporters covering English common law cases of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Modern Reports were criticized in their time for uneven quality, but they remain a primary source for Holt-era King's Bench decisions.
No other standard historical legal dictionaries — Bouvier, Tomlin, Jacob — appear to carry entries for this term. Its absence from those sources is consistent with its character: a reporter's notation rather than a legal term requiring doctrinal explanation. Black's inclusion of it, however sparse, reflects the 2nd edition's admirable reach into the practical vocabulary of legal reading.
---
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the English common law reporting tradition and has no operative meaning in any modern jurisdiction. It is a historical artifact of English legal publishing practice.
---