Definition
To write notes, annotations, or marginal observations upon a legal document. The term derives from French legal practice and refers to the act of appending a brief written commentary, gloss, or official notation to a document — either by a notary, judicial officer, or other authorized party. The product of this act is an apostille (also spelled appostille or apostyle), meaning the note or addition itself.
The term should be distinguished from its modern administrative cognate: in contemporary international law and practice, "apostille" has acquired a specific technical meaning under the Hague Convention of 1961 as a standardized certification of document authenticity for use across signatory nations. The verb apostiler, however, retains its older, broader sense — the act of annotating or noting upon a document — and appears primarily in historical legal sources rather than modern usage.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in standard modern English dictionaries as a common word. The noun "apostille" appears in reference to the Hague Convention authentication certificate.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as a common English word; treated as a term borrowed from French legal usage.
The gap here is directional: ordinary readers encountering "apostile" or "apostiller" today are overwhelmingly likely to connect it to the Hague apostille certification stamp. The historical legal term predates that meaning by centuries and carries a purely notational sense — the act of writing a marginal note or gloss — with no administrative authentication function whatsoever.
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Common Confusion
APOSTILER / APOSTILLE (historical) vs. APOSTILLE (Hague Convention): These are not the same thing. The historical apostile or apostille was simply a marginal note or annotation added to a document, a practice common in French and early English legal usage. The Hague Convention Apostille — the formal certification affixed to public documents to enable recognition in foreign jurisdictions — borrowed the word but assigned it an entirely new administrative and treaty-based meaning. A researcher encountering "apostile" or "apostiller" in a pre-twentieth-century source should not read backward any implication of international authentication. Conversely, modern materials on the Hague apostille tell the researcher nothing about historical annotation practice.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational hazard for researchers working across time periods. Its near-identity with "apostille" in the Hague Convention sense means search results in any corpus will be dominated by modern administrative materials. Researchers working in historical English legal records, French-derived legal texts, or early common law materials need to filter actively for the older annotative sense.
In historical sources, apostiler and its noun form apostille appear in contexts involving marginal commentary on statutes, judicial opinions, or notarial instruments. The practice was common enough in civilian and mixed-law jurisdictions — particularly French legal tradition — that Burrill considered it worth entry; its appearance in English sources (as noted via Kelham and Bacon) reflects borrowing from continental practice rather than indigenous common law usage.
Researchers working in notarial records, ecclesiastical court documents, or early equity practice may encounter the term where an officer or annotator has added a note of approval, qualification, or instruction alongside a primary text. The term signals a secondary layer of documentary content that may itself carry legal effect or interpretive weight.
Because the term has no active modern English legal life outside the Hague context, it is not likely to appear in post-twentieth-century case law or statutory material in its historical sense. Searching for it in modern legal databases will produce false positives from Hague apostille materials. Historical legal dictionaries and French-derived legal glossaries are the productive sources here.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary surviving English-language source for this term. Burrill defines apostiler as "to write notes on" (citing Kelham's Norman-French dictionary) and apostille as "addition, note or observation." Burrill also flags the spelling variants apostill, appostill, and apostyle, noting their use in old English writers, and confirms that appostille "is still used in French law" as of his writing. The citation to Bacon's Works (vi. 101) for the related form "postile" grounds the term in early modern English usage.
No other historical dictionaries in the current source set address this term, leaving Burrill as the sole authority. His entry is brief but reliable; the cross-reference to Kelham is significant because Kelham's glossary of Norman-French legal terms is a primary tool for interpreting medieval English legal records that draw on French vocabulary. Researchers needing more depth on the annotation practice itself will find French legal dictionaries — particularly those addressing ancien régime notarial and civilian practice — more productive than English common law sources.
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Jurisdictional Note
In its historical sense, apostiler and apostille are primarily French civil law terms that entered English legal usage through Norman-French influence. They have no meaningful life in modern American or English statutory or case law. The modern Hague apostille is a creature of international treaty and applies only in jurisdictions that have ratified or acceded to the Hague Convention of October 5, 1961.
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