Legal Term Dictionary

Search our free database of thousands of legal terms. The easiest-to-read, most user-friendly guide to legal terms.This dictionary is from the early 20th century and is not to be construed as legal advice.

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  • LATERARE
    To lie sideways, in opposition to lying endways; used in descriptions of lands.
  • LATH, LATHE
    The name of an ancient civil division in England, intermediate between the county or shire and the hundred. Said to be the same as what, in other parts of the kingdom, was termed a "rape." 1 Bl. Comm. 116; Cowell; Spelman. -Lathreve. An officer under the Saxon government, who had More...
  • LATIFUNDIUM
    Lat. In the civil law. Great or large possessions; a great or large field; a common. A great estate made up of smaller ones, (fundis,) which began to be common in the latter times of the empire.
  • LATIFUNDUS
    A possessor of a large estate made np of smaller ones. Du Cange.
  • LATIMER
    A word used by Lord Coke In the sense of an interpreter. 2 Inst 515. Supposed to be a corruption of the French "latinier," or "Miner." Cowell; Blount
  • LATIN
    The language of tbe ancient-Romans. There are three sorts of law Latin: (1) Good Latin, allowed by the grammarians and lawyers; (2) false or incongruous Latin, which in times past would abate original writs, though it would not make void any judicial writ, declaration, or plea, etc.; (3) words of More...
  • LATINARIUS
    An interpreter of Latin.
  • LATINI JUNIANI
    Lat. In Roman law. A class of freedmen (libcrtini) intermediate between the two other classes of freedmen called, respectively, "Cites Romani" and "Dediticii." Slaves under thirty years of age at the date of their manumission, or manumitted otherwise than by vindicta, census, or testamentum, or not the quiritary property of More...
  • LATITAT
    In old English practice. A writ which Issued in personal actions, on the return of non est inventus to a bill of Middlesex ; so called from tbe emphatic word in its recital, in which it was "testified that the defendant lurks [latitat] and wanders about" in the county. 3 More...
  • LATITATIO
    Lat. In the civil law and old English practice. A lying hid; lurking, or concealment of the person. Dig. 42, 4, 7, 5; Bract foL 126.
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