Definition
An obsolete Law French term from old English law denoting a tax, tribute, tallage, imposition, payment, charge, or general financial exaction levied on a person or property. The term functioned as a broad fiscal noun encompassing both compulsory public levies (taxes, tallages) and obligatory charges or expenses of a more private character. It does not survive as an operative term in modern legal practice but appears in historical records, medieval legal texts, and early common law sources.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In contemporary general usage, "apport" refers to a paranormal phenomenon — the supposed transference of a physical object from one location to another, or the materialization of an object from an unknown source, commonly associated with séances and poltergeist activity.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not record "apport" as an English word in general circulation, reflecting that the term had largely exited common English vocabulary by that period.
The gap here is near-total. The modern common meaning is an occult/parapsychological concept with no connection whatsoever to the legal sense. A researcher encountering "apport" in a general reference context and then in a medieval English legal document is looking at two entirely unrelated terms that happen to share a spelling. The legal sense is dead; the paranormal sense is the live popular usage. Neither informs the other.
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Common Confusion
APPORT should not be confused with APPORTIONMENT (the division or allocation of something among multiple parties or jurisdictions) or APPORTION (the verb form of that process). Though etymologically related and sharing a root in the notion of distributing or assigning shares, apport as used in old English law denoted a levy or charge in its own right — what was owed or imposed — not the act of dividing it. Burrill's entry underscores this by grouping apport with "tax," "tallage," "tribute," and "imposition" rather than with division concepts. The Latinized form APPORTIONAMENTUM, also recorded by Burrill, is the historical term that maps onto the modern concept of apportionment, and the two should be kept distinct in archival and historical research.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal records, manor court rolls, exchequer documents, or early common law treatises may encounter "apport" in any of its overlapping senses — tax, tribute, charge, or simply expense — without further specification. The term's breadth is itself a research trap: because it could denote a royal tallage, a local imposition, or a more general payment obligation, context is essential to determine which fiscal relationship is at issue.
The Kelham citation repeated across all three source dictionaries (Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language, 1779) signals that the authoritative path for resolving ambiguous uses of this term runs through Norman French lexicography, not through standard legal dictionaries. Researchers relying solely on Black's will get a thin entry; Burrill adds the fuller list of synonyms that more accurately conveys the term's range.
The co-appearance of APPORTIONAMENTUM in Burrill is a navigational cue: when a historical source uses the Latinized form, it is likely referring to the procedural act of apportionment (allocation among parties), whereas the Law French "apport" signals the levy or charge itself. Conflating these in transcription or analysis distorts the legal relationship being described.
No modern American or English legal instrument uses "apport" as a term of art. Any appearance in a contemporary document is either a historical quotation, a translation artifact, or an error.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries converge almost entirely. Black's first edition offers the shortest treatment ("charge; expenses"), while Black's second edition and Burrill's both present the fuller synonymic range: tax, tallage, tribute, imposition, payment, charge, expenses. The differences are editorial rather than substantive — Black's second edition reproduces Burrill's expansion nearly verbatim.
All three sources cite Kelham as the sole authority, which is appropriate given that the term belongs to Norman French legal vocabulary that passed out of active use before English legal lexicography had fully developed. This uniform reliance on a single eighteenth-century Norman French dictionary reflects the term's antiquity and the thinness of the primary source trail available to nineteenth-century legal lexicographers.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide: any contextual guidance on which species of fiscal obligation "apport" denoted in a given document, no distinction between royal and manorial impositions, and no indication of when the term fell out of active legal use. Researchers needing that context must consult primary exchequer and manor records directly or engage medieval fiscal history scholarship.
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Jurisdictional Note
Apport is strictly an old English law term and has no recognized meaning in any modern common law jurisdiction. It carries no operative legal force in American, English, Canadian, or Australian law. Its relevance is exclusively historical and archival, confined to the period of Anglo-Norman legal influence on English common law.
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