Contrectatio

Lat. A handling or meddling with; the improper or unauthorized use of a thing. This term is employed in the civil law in the definition of theft, (furtum.) Inst. 4.

1. 1, 6, 8.

See Furium. Bracton has borrowed it from this source, but in many copies of that author it is misprinted contractatio, (fol. 150 b;) which has sometimes occasioned difliculty in interpreting the passage in which it occurs. Dunlap, arg.

5 Mason's R, 640.