Definition
To belong to, relate to, or be connected with something as a right, quality, attribute, or incident. In legal usage, a right, privilege, or interest appertains to property, an office, or a person when it attaches to that thing by operation of law, custom, grant, or the nature of the relationship — not merely by physical proximity. The term appears most frequently in conveyancing, where deeds transfer property "together with all rights, privileges, and appurtenances appertaining thereto," and in descriptions of easements, water rights, and other interests that travel with the principal estate.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To belong to or be a part of, whether by right, nature, appointment, or custom; to relate to. To belong as a part, right, possession, attribute, etc.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To belong or pertain, whether by right, nature, appointment, or custom; to relate. "Things appertaining to this life." "Give it unto him to whom it appertaineth."
The gap between common and legal usage is narrow but consequential. In ordinary speech, "appertain" simply means to relate or belong to — a loose connection. In legal usage, the word carries a more technical freight: it signals that the relationship is one of legal attachment, not merely logical association or physical adjacency. When a deed uses "appertaining," it invokes the concept of appurtenance — a legally cognizable incident that runs with an estate. A researcher encountering the word in a conveyance should not read it as mere description; it may define the scope of what was transferred.
Common Confusion
APPERTAIN vs. ADJOIN: Anderson's Dictionary draws an explicit and useful distinction. To adjoin means to be physically contiguous — to touch or border. To appertain means to belong by right, use, or legal incident, regardless of physical proximity. A right-of-way over a distant parcel can appertain to a dominant estate even though the parcels do not touch. Conversely, two parcels that share a boundary line do not thereby appertain to one another. In deed interpretation, "appertaining" imports use and occupancy; "adjoining" imports physical contiguity. Conflating the two terms can produce serious errors in title analysis and easement research.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with historical deeds, conveyances, or land grants will encounter "appertain" and its variants — appertaining, appertaineth, appertained — with significant frequency. The term is a marker word: its presence in a granting clause or habendum signals that the drafter intended to carry appurtenant rights along with the principal conveyance. When analyzing what passed under an old deed, the word should trigger scrutiny of what incidental rights, easements, or privileges were attached to the estate at the time of conveyance.
In corpus research, note that the verb form "appertain" appears less frequently in modern American legal drafting than its noun cousin "appurtenance" and the adjective "appurtenant." Historical English conveyances and colonial-era American instruments use the verb more liberally. When the Law Mind corpus spans pre-twentieth century materials, "appertain" will appear with greater density in property and conveyancing documents than in procedural or criminal law sources.
The Anderson's distinction between "appertaining" and "adjoining" as deed description words is practically important: when a court is asked to construe what a historical deed conveyed, the choice of one word over the other could determine whether a disputed easement or water right was included in the grant.
Researchers should also be alert to jurisdictional variation in how courts have interpreted the phrase "with all privileges and appurtenances thereunto appertaining" — a formulaic string in common law conveyancing that courts have interpreted both broadly (to include all appurtenant easements) and narrowly (to pass only what was explicitly established at time of grant).
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines the term tersely: "To belong to; relation to; to be appurtenant to." This entry does no more than confirm the verb's core legal function and cross the term to its noun form. It is typical of Black's treatment of connective or relational words — minimal, oriented toward definition rather than application.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law adds genuine analytical value by drawing the adjoin/appertain distinction explicitly, noting that proof of physical adjacency would not constitute proof of appurtenance, and that the two words perform different descriptive work in deeds. This is the more useful entry for a practitioner or researcher interpreting historical conveyance language.
Neither source addresses the evolution of the term's use across time or its treatment in equity versus common law, which is a gap. Historical treatises on real property conveyancing — particularly those addressing easements passing by implication — provide the richer context that neither dictionary entry supplies.
Jurisdictional Note
The verb "appertain" appears across common law jurisdictions without significant definitional divergence, but courts have varied in how broadly they construe the phrase "appertaining thereto" in deed granting clauses, particularly regarding whether implied easements pass under the language. Louisiana, as a civil law jurisdiction, frames analogous concepts through the vocabulary of predial servitudes rather than appurtenance doctrine.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Appurtenance; Easements and Appurtenant Rights; Conveyancing and Deed Construction.