Definition
A prendre (from the Law French "to take") is a term describing a right to enter another's land and take something from it — whether soil, minerals, timber, game, fish, or other natural produce. The phrase appears most commonly as part of the compound term "profit à prendre," which names the full property right itself. Standing alone, "à prendre" functions as a qualifying descriptor, distinguishing rights that involve physical extraction from rights that involve mere use or passage.
A profit à prendre is a right coupled with a profit — meaning the holder may not only enter the land but remove something of value from it. This distinguishes it from an easement, which confers a right to use land without the ability to take anything away.
Common Confusion
A prendre vs. easement: The two concepts are frequently conflated in older property discussions because both involve rights exercised over another person's land. The critical line is extraction. An easement gives the right to use — to cross, to drain, to have light. A profit à prendre gives the right to take — to cut timber, to graze animals, to dig minerals. A holder of a profit à prendre enters the land and leaves with something; a holder of an easement enters and leaves with nothing but the benefit of use. The historical dictionaries are consistent on this distinction, citing 5 Adolphus & Ellis 758 as authority for the separation.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will almost never encounter "à prendre" as a freestanding entry in case law or deeds. Its operational significance is almost entirely as the second half of "profit à prendre." When searching historical sources, be aware that older English and early American authorities sometimes compress the phrase into a single word — "apprender" or "apprendre" — which can cause keyword searches to miss relevant material. Variant spellings are flagged in Black's (both editions) and should be built into any corpus search string.
The distinction between profits and easements carries real consequence in property research. Profits à prendre were more freely assignable and more frequently alienated from the underlying land ownership in English practice. In historical conveyancing documents, look for the phrase "right to take" or "right of common" as functional equivalents when the Law French form is absent.
Research connecting profit à prendre to common rights (common of pasture, common of estovers, common of piscary, common of turbary) is essential. These are the most practically encountered forms of the right in English property law and in American jurisdictions that inherited English common law frameworks. The à prendre label ties together what might otherwise appear to be unrelated doctrines.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's — provide nearly identical entries, tracking the same authority: Crabb's Real Property at page 125, section 115, and the Adolphus & Ellis citation for the easement distinction. The consistency suggests these entries were transmitted from a common source rather than independently researched, which is useful to know when evaluating their weight.
None of the three dictionaries develop the substantive law of profits à prendre beyond the definitional minimum. Researchers seeking doctrinal treatment — questions of appurtenance, assignability, extinguishment, or remedies — will find the dictionary entries inadequate and should move directly to Crabb's Real Property or to treatise-level sources on common law property rights.
The Burrill entry appears corrupted in the available text, running into an unrelated entry (Bref a Responsis), but the substantive content of the à prendre definition is intact and matches the Black's formulations.
Jurisdictional Note
Profit à prendre doctrine descends from English common law and applies in American jurisdictions that follow the common law property tradition, though the right arises far less frequently in modern American practice than in English history. Some American states have modified or codified aspects of the doctrine; in others it survives largely as received common law. Researchers working in Louisiana or other civil law-influenced jurisdictions should note that the conceptual framework differs.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Profits -- Right to Take (Profit a Prendre), The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia