Definition
Latin phrase meaning "by alternate turns" or "at alternate times." Used in legal instruments and pleadings to describe an arrangement in which two parties or interests take turns in succession — each having its period or opportunity in alternation with the other. The phrase appears most frequently in older conveyancing contexts, particularly in descriptions of rights exercised in rotation between co-owners or neighboring landholders.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow Latin phrase of the kind that appears without explanation in early English legal instruments and treatises, then disappears almost entirely from modern legal writing. Researchers encountering it in historical deeds, conveyances, or pleadings should recognize it as a descriptor of rotational or alternating arrangement — not as a term of art carrying independent legal force, but as a shorthand for a structural feature of the instrument being construed.
The principal traps are two. First, the phrase is easily overlooked as mere ornamentation when in fact it may be doing interpretive work — defining the schedule or order of enjoyment for a shared right (a common pasture, a waterway, an easement of way). Second, researchers working in secondary sources may find the phrase cited only through Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 4a) and Sheppard's Touchstone of Common Assurances (ch. on conditions and limitations), both of which are available in the Law Mind corpus. Those citations are the thread back to the substantive contexts in which the phrase actually operated.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill agree precisely on definition and citation, all pointing to Co. Litt. 4a and Shep. Touch. 206. This unanimity reflects the phrase's limited functional range — it was not contested or litigated as a term of art, so the dictionaries had nothing to argue about. What all three sources omit is any substantive discussion of the conveyancing or property contexts in which the phrase did its work. The dictionary entries are essentially glosses, not analyses. Researchers should not expect the dictionary record to carry them far; the primary sources — Coke and Sheppard — are where the meaning in use is found.