Definition
A Latin term from Roman and medieval law carrying two related but distinct operative meanings depending on context:
1. (Civil law) To assign, allot, or appoint — particularly in the sense of designating a person or thing to a specific role or beneficiary. The classical usage involved assigning a freedman (libertus) to the care or household of a particular child of the patron.
2. (Old English practice and conveyancing) To assign, transfer, or make over — the act of conveying an interest, right, or property from one party to another. Also used in the specific sense of marking out or setting off a portion of land, as in allotting a widow her dower rights from a larger estate.
The term is the Latin root from which the English legal vocabulary of assignment descends. In medieval instruments and pleadings, assignare appears frequently in operative clauses where modern drafters would use "assign," "transfer," or "set over."
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with Latin legal texts, medieval English conveyances, or early common law pleadings will encounter assignare as a term of art rather than mere description. Its meaning shifts materially by context: in Roman law sources it carries the sense of appointment or designation; in English conveyancing records it signals a transfer of interest or, in dower proceedings, the physical demarcation of a widow's portion.
The dower application is particularly important for property researchers. When assignare appears in records involving widows and landed estates, it does not mean transfer of title — it means the physical setting out of the widow's one-third share from the broader holding. This is a procedurally specific act distinct from a general conveyance, and conflating the two will misread the document.
In digests and abridgments organized under the English headings "Assignment" or "Dower," the Latin assignare in original sources may not be indexed consistently. Researchers using Burrill or other Latin-inflected dictionaries as bridges between original instruments and English-language digests should note that the civil law sense (appointment of freedmen, allocation of obligations) and the common law conveyancing sense appear under the same headword but belong to separate doctrinal traditions.
The phrase cui terram illam dare vel assignare voluerit — "to whomever he shall wish to give or assign that land" — is characteristic of the formula found in medieval charters and grants. When encountered in original sources, it signals that the grantor reserved power to name a transferee, a point with significant implications for understanding whether a completed conveyance had occurred.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal shelf source for this term and treats both senses with care, grounding the civil law meaning in the Institutes and Digest (Inst. 3.9.pr.; Dig. 38.4; Dig. 50.16.107) and the conveyancing meaning in the language of actual instruments. Burrill's entry is stronger on the civil law side than on the conveyancing mechanics, offering the operative Latin phrase as illustration but not fully unpacking the dower-specific procedure.
Older Latin legal dictionaries, including Spelman's Glossarium and Du Cange's Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, provide additional attestations for the conveyancing and land-measurement senses, reflecting the term's use across continental and insular medieval practice. Researchers who rely on Burrill alone may underestimate how widely the land-marking sense of assignare circulated in non-English jurisdictions.
Modern legal dictionaries, working primarily in English, do not carry assignare as a headword. The doctrinal content has migrated entirely into "assignment," "dower," and related English terms, leaving the Latin form accessible only through historical and comparative dictionaries.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Assignment
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Dower
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