Definition
An obsolete term from old English law meaning resemblance or likelihood. The term appears almost exclusively in the phrase "apparlement of war," denoting outward signs, appearances, or indications that a state of war exists or is imminent — the visible likeness or semblance of warlike conditions rather than a formal declaration.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No current entry; the term is not in general modern use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed; the term did not enter common English usage even in the nineteenth century.
The word derives from the Law French pareillement, meaning "likewise" or "in like manner," suggesting resemblance or correspondence. Unlike most Law French terms that eventually shed their legal specificity and entered broader English, apparlement never crossed over — it remained confined to a narrow statutory context and disappeared with the legislation that used it.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter apparlement almost exclusively in materials touching on the Statute of 2 Richard II, stat. 1, c. 6, a late fourteenth-century English enactment. Its appearance elsewhere in legal literature is rare and typically derivative of that single statutory reference, usually filtered through Cowell's Interpreter.
The key research trap is treating apparlement as a general evidentiary or probability term. It was not a broad concept of legal likelihood analogous to probability standards. Its function was contextual and narrow: identifying the visible markers or outward appearance of war for purposes of the statute in question — likely bearing on trade, safe-conduct, or conduct during hostilities. Researchers analyzing medieval English commercial or military law should note that the concept did real definitional work in the statute even though the word itself left almost no doctrinal trail.
Because the term is rooted in Law French rather than Latin, researchers working in early English legal records should be alert to spelling variants. Burrill flags the French root explicitly and notes the related term APPAROIR (also Apparoer, Apparoier), meaning "to appear" or "to make known," which is a distinct term sharing etymological kinship. Conflating the two would be an error: apparlement concerns resemblance as a substantive condition; apparoir concerns the procedural act of appearing or making something manifest.
No significant evolution of meaning occurred because the term never developed beyond its statutory context. It did not migrate into equity, common law pleading, or later legislative drafting. Researchers searching the Law Mind corpus should expect to find it only in glossaries, legal dictionaries, and commentary on the Richard II statute itself.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's — agree precisely on the definition: resemblance or likelihood, illustrated by the phrase "apparlement of war," and grounded in Statute 2 Richard II, stat. 1, c. 6, as reported through Cowell. The convergence is unsurprising given that all three sources ultimately trace back to Cowell's Interpreter, the early seventeenth-century legal glossary that preserved much Law French terminology for later lexicographers.
Burrill adds the most useful independent contribution by identifying the Law French etymology (pareillement) and by including the related entry for APPAROIR, giving researchers a fuller picture of the linguistic family. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) are nearly identical to each other and add nothing beyond Burrill on this point.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide — and what no secondary source appears to supply — is any substantive analysis of the operative effect of apparlement within the Richard II statute itself. The dictionaries preserve the word but not its legal context. Researchers needing to understand what conduct the statute regulated, and what role the "apparlement of war" standard played in that regulation, must go to the primary source.
Jurisdictional Note
Apparlement is a term of old English law with no reception into American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions as an operative legal concept. It is of historical and linguistic interest only and carries no current jurisdictional significance.