In his 1897 edition of his American Law Dictionary (The Boston Book Company), John Bouvier wrote that:
"(Rout) generally agrees in all particulars with a riot, except only in this: that it may be a complete offence without the execution of the intended entreprise."
Designed to capture conduct beyond unlawful assembly but not quite a riot, the common law offence has practically never been used, one British author saying that "prosecutions for it are unknown" (Byrne in A Dictionary of English Law, London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1923 at page 786).