Definition
In old English law, to interrogate or examine a person by questioning. The term appears in contexts of formal official inquiry, where an officer or examiner would appose a witness or accountant — that is, put questions to them as part of an official proceeding or audit. The word is archaic and does not appear in modern legal usage, having been displaced by terms such as examine, interrogate, or depose.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To interrogate; to question.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To place opposite or before; to put or apply one thing to another; to place in juxtaposition or proximity.
The common and legal meanings here diverge in an instructive way. Webster's 1913 records the dominant general sense as spatial — placing things against or beside each other — while the legal sense, recorded by Burrill and confirmed by Wiktionary's secondary entry, carries the meaning of formal questioning. The legal meaning derives from a distinct line of usage, not from any metaphorical extension of the spatial sense. A researcher encountering "appose" in a historical legal document should not read it as referring to placement or proximity.
Common Confusion
APPOSE / OPPOSE / APPOSITE: The visual similarity among these words creates hazards in transcription and reading of manuscript sources. Oppose carries adversarial connotation; apposite means relevant or fitting; appose in legal usage means to question formally. In older printed and manuscript sources where typefaces and handwriting blur distinctions, these words have occasionally been misread for one another. A researcher who encounters "appose" in a legal record and interprets it through the lens of Webster's spatial meaning — or conflates it with oppose — will misread the passage entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
Appose is an obsolete term and will appear almost exclusively in early English legal materials — proceedings before the Exchequer, audits of public accounts, and related administrative records from the medieval and early modern periods. Bacon's use of the term, cited by Burrill, places it in the context of official examination practice.
Researchers working in Exchequer records, Star Chamber proceedings, or early chancery documents should recognize appose as a technical term of art for official questioning, not a stray word meaning placement. Because the term has entirely dropped from modern legal vocabulary, general legal dictionaries compiled after the nineteenth century will not contain it, and researchers relying only on modern sources will find no guidance.
The word's absence from American legal dictionaries reflects the broader pattern of early English administrative terminology that failed to cross the Atlantic as operative legal vocabulary. If this term appears in a corpus document, it is almost certainly a pre-1700 English source or a learned reference to such sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary source here, and his entry is brief: "In old English law. To interrogate or question. Bacon's Works, iii. 115." The reference to Bacon is useful as a date anchor and suggests the word was already being treated as technical vocabulary requiring explanation by the early seventeenth century. No other major historical legal dictionaries — not Jacob, not Bouvier, not Black's early editions — appear to carry this term, which itself confirms its narrow and archaic scope. Wiktionary's alignment with the interrogation sense (rather than the spatial sense) suggests the legal meaning survived in general reference long enough to be recorded, but the term never achieved broad currency outside specialist contexts.
Jurisdictional Note
Appose as a legal term is exclusively English in origin and application. It has no recognized use in American, Scottish, or civil law traditions. Researchers encountering it outside English legal sources should treat the appearance with caution.