Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning to approve or improve land — specifically, to take the benefit or profit of land for oneself. The term encompasses both the act of enclosing and cultivating waste or common land for private use and, more broadly, the act of deriving advantage or profit from property. It appears in medieval English legal texts as the operative verb underlying the doctrine of approvement, by which a lord of a manor could enclose portions of common waste, provided sufficient pasture remained for commoners.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially extinct in modern legal usage. Researchers will encounter it only in medieval and early modern English sources — primarily in Fleta, Bracton-era texts, and statutory commentary on the Statute of Westminster II (1285), c. 46. Its significance is almost entirely historical: the term is the Latin root from which the English doctrine of approvement of waste derived, and understanding appruare clarifies what early treatise writers meant when they referenced a lord's right to "approve" his land.
The principal research trap is false cognate confusion. Appruare looks related to the common law term "approver" (one who turns king's evidence against accomplices), but the two are etymologically and doctrinally unrelated. A researcher scanning medieval Latin texts who encounters appruare should read it in the land-improvement sense, not the criminal informant sense.
A secondary trap is the abbreviated or corrupted form in which the word appears. Black's 2nd edition entry for appruare appears to have been corrupted in transcription — the surviving text reads "profit. Cowell. To take to one's use or In the civil law. A driv — Dig. 8, 3, 1, 1," suggesting a printer's error or page-break loss that merged two separate entries. Researchers relying on that edition alone may be misled into thinking appruare has a civil law dimension. Burrill's entry is the more reliable and complete source for this term.
The Fleta citations in Burrill (lib. 2, c. 72–73; lib. 4, c. 20) are the primary textual anchors. Researchers working through the history of common rights, enclosure, or the lord-tenant relationship in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries should treat those Fleta passages as the authoritative context for the term's use.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st ed.) defines the term minimally: "To take to one's use or profit," citing Cowell's Interpreter. Burrill provides the richer account, grounding appruare in the Statute of Westminster II and the Fleta, and illustrating the term's use in compound phrases: commodum suum facere et appruare ("to make his own profit and to approve") demonstrates that appruare functioned as a technical verb of land improvement alongside, but distinct from, general profit-taking. Burrill also notes the passive form appruari, indicating that land itself could be "approved" — enclosed and improved — as a recognized legal condition.
Black's 2nd edition entry is unreliable in its current form due to apparent transcription corruption and should be cross-checked against Burrill and the original Cowell citation before being relied upon. None of the historical dictionaries provide a full account of the doctrine's operation or its relationship to commoners' rights; researchers needing that doctrinal context must move beyond the dictionaries to the Fleta directly or to secondary scholarship on medieval agrarian law.
Jurisdictional Note
Appruare is specific to English legal history and has no counterpart in American law. It does not appear in equity or common law practice after the early modern period. The underlying doctrine of approvement has vestigial traces in English property law but is not part of any American jurisdiction's operative legal framework.