Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence

A Latin word translated table or tablet; the name of a thin sheet of wood, which, when covered with wax, was used for writing. An instrument written on such a tablet was also calle

Implied; silent. Tacit relocation. Is the Scotch term for the implied reletting which arises when, on the expiration of a lease, neither lessor nor lessee expresses any intention t

II. Is a Scotch name for a lease; as in the following passage from Erskine: " Where neither the setter nor tacksman shall properly discover their intention to have the tack dissolv

V. To annex some junior lien to a first lien, thereby acquiring priority over an intermediate one. Tacking: a doctrine of equity jurisprudence, allowing the owner of a first and th

See Entail; Fee-tail. Estate tail signifies an estate of inheritance, descendible to some particular heirs only of the person to whom it is granted, in general — >.c. without disti

Another form of the word tallage, q. v.

The term of Scotch law corresponding to entail.

The name of a writ, derived from the plural of the Latin talis, such, (jr. V. It denotes a summoning of additional persons to serve as jurors upon a panel which has become exhauste

Punishment of the same nature as the offence; retaliation by authority of law. See Lex Talionis.

When pleading the judgment of an inferior court, the proceedings preliminary to such judgment, and on which the same was founded, must, to some extent, appear in the pleading; but

This word is said to be tax; being derived from the French tail Ur, which signifies a piece cut out of the whole. It extends to subsidies, taxes, customs, and, indeed, any charges

That which may be touched; actual; corporal; material. Tangible property is property which may be touched, and is the object of sensation. The term includes lands and corporeal cha

An ancient system of tenure, which prevailed in Ireland, and allotted the inheritance of lands, castles, &c., to the oldest and most worthy and capable person of the deceased's nam

Late; too late. The emphatic word in several forms of return by a sheriff upon writs coming to his hands so late that he could not execute them. Such returns are termed tarde, or t

The first word in the phrase signifies an allowance in merpacked; and the last is a consideration in the weight, for waste in emptying and reselling the gpods, by dust, dirt, break

Originally, an enumeration, list, schedule, or table, setting forth numerous subjects in some systematic order, and so as to show charges, prices, or rates affixed to each item. He

This word is sometimes employed, in a wide sense, as equivalent to sui juris. A person sui juris is called paterfamilias, even when under the age of puberty. In the narrower and mo

Originally, a wine-shop; a house where liquor is sold in small quantities, to be drank there. It gi'adually became, when lodgings and meals came to be furnished at such places, nea

V. 1. In public law, to assess or impose upon citizens or subjects a pecuniary contribution towards support of government. 2. In practice of courts, to assess, determine, or fix, a

1. Applied to persons or property, signifies subject to taxation; liable to some common exaction levied by government to provide a revenue. A power contained in a city charter, to

or

As used in a statute prescribing the mode of passing when any wagon, carriage, &c., shall meet or overtake a team on the highway, means a vehicle, with the animals drawing it, used

Terms of the law. Also, the name of a notable lexicon of the law-French words and other technicalities of legal language in old times.

Is the Scotch law term corresponding to tithes (q. v.) in English ecclesiastical law; and teind court is the designation of a court which has jurisdiction of questions of clergymen

The designation of persons appointed in various places, for duties requiring counting. The old form of the word is said to have been tallier, meaning a person who.se function it is

A religious order of knighthood, instituted about the year 1119, and so called because the members dwelt in a part of the Temple of Jerusalem, and not far from the sepulchre of our

Two of the inns of court. At the suppression of the order of knights templars, their dwelling- was purchased by the professors of the common law, and converted into inns of court,

Time; a time; a limited period of time. Tempus continuum. A continuous period of time. In the civil law, this tenn denotes a period of time which is reckoned continuously once it h

A formal offer; a proffer made in such manner as to bind the party although he refuses it. Also, such currency or money as may by law be offered in payment of debts. Tender may be

This word has a very comprehensive signification in lavr, including within its compass every species of real property which may be held, or in respect of which a person may be a te

To be held; to hold. The initial word in that clause of deeds in Latin which was formerly used in expressing the tenure by which the estate granted was to be held; which clause is

The language of a writing. By the tenor of a deed, or other instrument in writing, is signified the matter contained therein, according to the true intent and meaning thereof. Cowe

The English Stat. 9 Geo. IV. ch. 14, understood to have been passed at the instance of Lord Tenterden. It is in the nature of an enlarged application of the principle of the statut

Tenths and fifteenths were temporary aids issuing out of personal Sroperty, and granted to the king by pararaent. They were formerly the real or actual tenth or fifteenth part of a

Holding. A term used in discussing and classifying the various rights in virtue of which a person may maintain, before the law, his occupancy and enjoyment of any thing. The word i

A voyage is terminated when the vessel arrives at her port of destination, and has been moored there in safety for twenty-four hours. But the termination of the voyage as to the sh

An old English writ which lay for th6 reversioner, when the possession was withheld by the lessee, or a stranger, after the determination of a lease for years.

Boundary; a limit, either of space or time. The word sometimes denotes an estate for a term of years. See Inteeesse Termini. Terminus a quo. The limit from which. The point of begi

He that holds lands or tenements for a term of years or life. (Cowel.) But we generally confine the application of the word to a person entitled for a term of years. (2 Bl. Com. 14

Earth; soil. Occurs in many Latin phrases found in old English law, in most of which it means Terra affirmata. Land let to farm. Terra boscalis. Woody land. Terra culta. Cultivated

The holder of land; the person who is in actual possession or occupation of land. Sometimes the term is used in a more technical sense, signifying he who is seised of land, though

A land-roll, or survey of lands, either of a single person or of a town, containing the quantity of acres, tenants' names, and such Uke; and in the exchequer there Is a terrier of

A part of a country organized distinctly from the rest, and subjected or subordinated in government or jurisdiction. In American constitutional law, after any region of the contine

An act of parliament which prescribed that all officers, civil and military, should take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, with the oath of office, and make declaration agains

An ancient document, in two volumes, in the custody of the king's remembrancer in the exchequer of England, otherwise called liber feodorum, supposed to have been compiled by John

The formal document by which one may make disposition of his property to take effect at his death; a will. Testamentary: connected with or pertaining to w Uls. Testator: the maker

Witnesseth." In conveyancing, the witnessing part of a deed, — beginning, in the English form, " Now this indenture witnesseth," — is termed, from the characteristic Latin word, th

Witnesses. When the validity of a will is contested, the executor, instead of proving it in the common form, — i.e. upon his own oath simply, — before the registrar of the court of

Besides its ordinary meaning of a written recommendation to character, testimonial has a special meaning, under Stat. 39 Eliz. ch. 17, § 3, passed in 1597, under which it signified

Declarations of witnesses; evidence by statements of persons conversant with the fact to be proved. The word testimony is not synonymous Harvey ». Smith, Id. 272; Mc Conaha v. Carr

That portion of the king's land of which a thane {a. v.) was the ruler or governor was termed " thanage of the king." Cowel.

One of those who attended the English-Saxon kings in their courts, and who held their lands immediately of those kings. Those that served the king immediately in places of eminence

Any edifice used for the purpose of dramatic or operatic or other representations, plays, or performances, for admission to which entrance-money is received, not including halls re

An unlawful felonious taking away of another man's movable and personal goods, against the will of the owner. Jacob. Theft is the fraudulent taking of corporeal personal property b

The Stat. 39 the will made by a Mr. Thellusson. He was a person of great wealth; and by his will, after providing for his immediate descendants, he left the bulk of his property to

A writ that formerly lay for the citizens of any city, or burgesses of any town that had a charter or prescription to free them from toll, against the officers of any town or marke

The term " thieves " is broad enough in law to cover both compound and simple larceny. When used in a policy upon cargo of a vessel, it is not restricted in its application to pira

Where a testator devises all Ms property, both real and personal, " after his just debts and funeral expenses are paid, and his wife's thirds are taken out," the wife is entitled t

A servitude in Scotland, by which the possessor of lands was bound to carry all his grain to a certain mill to be ground, for which he was bound to pay a proportion of the flour or

A threat has been defined to be any menace of such a nature and extent as to unsettle the mind of the person on whom it operates, and to take away from his acts that free, voluntar

The woi^ds throat disease, as one of the questions to be answered in a proposal for life insurance, which, with the policy, contained a stipulation that, in case of false answers t

What the legislature has meant by the word ticket, in a statute to prohibit the circulation of tickets, must he matter of construction, to be gathered from the terms employed in th

The ebb and flow of the sea. Tide-lands. The term tide-lands, as used in the California act of May 14, 1861, means lands covered and uncovered by the tides, and does not include la

When the votes cast for and those against a question submitted to a deliberative body are equal in number, so that no result is reached, there is said to be a tie. See Casting Votk

A civil-law term for building material; timber. Tigni immittendi. In the civil law, a servitude consisting in the right of inserting a beam or timber from the wall of one house int

Wood fitted for building, oak, ash, and elm, will probably be found, on tracing it back to its source, to originate in the fact that acts of parliament protecting timber particular

As to the calendar, see Cai>

An officer appointed by the marshal of the king's bench to attend upon the judges with a kind of rod or stafE tipped with silver, who take into their custody all prisoners, either

The tenth part of the annual product of the labor of the community, accorded to the clergy as their compensation. In early books, tithes seem to have been regarded as an ecclesiast

One of the civil divisions of England, being a portion of that greater division called a hundred. It was so called because ten freeholders with their families composed one. It is s

Entitled. Seems to be used both as adjective and noun. Titulars of erection. Persons who in Scotland, after the reformation, obtained grants from the crown of the monasteries and p

1. The civil law and old law-Latin words for title {q. v.), as in the following extract from Lord Coke: Titulus est justa causa possidendi id quod nostrum est; dicitur a tuendo. 8

The term granulated tobacco, as used in internal revenue laws, is not synonymous with snuff, but refers to certain kinds of chewing and smoking tobacco. Venable w. Richards, 1 Hugh

A place or piece of ground where a house formerly stood, but which is decayed jr casually burnt, and not re-edifled. Jacob.

A material visible sign of the existence of a fact. Thus, cheating by false tokens is perpetrating a fraud by employment of some material device, some cunningly devised false thing

In a strict or legal sense, seems to mean that permission to exist, which, in a state where one form of religion is established and upheld by law, may, from motives of state policy

V. To bar, defeat, or take away; thus, to toll the entry, means to deny or take away the right of entry. Tolled: barred; taken away.

n. A Saxon word, signifying, properly, a payment in towns, markets, and fairs for goods and cattle bought and sold. It is a reasonable sum of money due to the owner of the fair or

A charge in the nature of a toll. Apparently, the noun toU had, in its earliest use, the sense of a franchise or liberty to keep a fair or market, for resort to and trade in which

1. A house or booth for collection of tolls or market charges; a custom-house; also, a prison. Dr. Jamieson conjectures that the word to Ubooth, originally signifying a place of cu

An old English writ, whereby a cause depending in a court-baron is taken and removed into the county court. As tills writ moves the cause to the county court, so the writ -pone, re

A measure of weight, somewhat differently fixed by different statutes, at two thousand pounds avoirdupois (see 1 N. Y. Rev. Stat. 609, § 35); or at twenty hundredweight, each hundr

A species of life annuity, the invention of which is ascribed to Lorenzo Tonti, an Italian, by whom it was propounded at about the middle of the seventeenth century, as a mode by w

The statutes of many states contain provisions exempting from execution the tools of a debtor's trade; or otherwise securing one's tools. This has given rise to some decisions as t

A civil or private wrong; an injury not involving a breach of contract. Tortious: having the qualities of a tort; unlawful and injurious to individuals; wrongful. The word tort is

n. Corporal suffering, inflicted to extort confession from suspected criminals, or in the indulgence of cruel and malevolent motives. The vpord recurs in the history of jurispruden

Originally and literally, this phrase, used in insurance law, imports the entire destruction of the thing insured. But in the development of that branch of law, rules have become e

A good debt to the king noted as such by an officer, called the " foreign apposer," writing the word lot opposite to it, in the estreat-roU in the exchequer, to indicate that for s

Policies of marine insurance have frequently given the vessel leave to touch and stay at designated ports. It seems formerly to have been held that the insured vessel thus empowere

1. The labor or service of drawing a vessel from one place to another, through the water. 2. The compensation or price paid for drawing a vessel. When it becomes especially desirab

That is to say; namely; scilicet; videlicet, qq. v.

This terni is differently used in different parts of the United States, in some regions signifying a civil division of a county, irrespective of incorporation or powers of governme

In the most convenient use of this word, it signifies a territorial division; one of the units of survey into which a county is divided. This is particularly true in those states i

Does not imply any thing as to the size of the parcel of land denoted. Edwards v. Derrickson, 28 N. J. L. 39.

Delivery; transfer of possession. Traditio loqui facit chartam. Delivery makes a deed speak. Delivery gives efiect to the words of a deed; until delivered, a deed is without effect

Justices of trailbaston were justices appointed by King Edward I., during his absence in the Scotch and French wars, about the year 1305. They were so styled, says Ho Uingshed, for

One chargeable with treason; also, more generally, one ■who betrays a trust. Traitorous: treasonable; betraying. Traitorously: in the manner of traitors. TRANSACTIO; TRANSACTION. T

The term transaction, in a statute limiting countercial or business negotiation, and not a wrong of violence or fraud. In an action for an assault and battery, the defendant cannot

A copy; anything ■written from an original. Burrill says it means a copy, particularly, of a record. This has always been the import of the word, it rarely or never being applied t

v. To assign; to convey. Also, to remove; to change the location, place, or relation of. Transfer, n.: an act or transaction by which property of one person is by him vested in ano