Definition
A Latin verb used in old English conveyancing documents meaning "to bargain" or "to agree" to a transaction, particularly the sale or transfer of real property. The term appears in medieval and early modern deeds as part of operative language conveying or disposing of an interest in land. It is the infinitive form from which conjugated variants in deed recitals derive, including barganizavit et vendidit ("hath bargained and sold") and barganizasset ("had bargained").
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with pre-modern English deeds, plea rolls, or early colonial conveyancing records will encounter barganizare and its conjugated forms embedded in strings of operative words. Understanding the term is essential for parsing the granting clause of a deed, which often accumulates multiple synonymous verbs — dedi, concessi, barganizavi et feoffavi — to ensure no technical form of transfer was omitted. Each word in such a string carried potential legal significance: failure to include the right verb could affect whether a use, a fee simple, or a lesser estate was conveyed.
The phrase barganizavit et vendidit is the Latin equivalent of the English "bargained and sold," the operative language of the Statute of Uses (1535) conveyance type known as the bargain and sale. Researchers should be alert to context: the same Latin root appears in instruments that predate the Statute of Uses and in those that deploy it. The legal effect differs substantially depending on which regime applies. In pre-Statute instruments, the language may indicate only a covenant to stand seised or an informal agreement; post-Statute, barganizare language may execute a use and vest legal title without livery of seisin.
This term also appears in the Registers of Writs (Registrum Brevium) and in Year Book-era plea records, where recital of the precise words of a conveyance was necessary to state a cause of action. Researchers using Burrill or similar nineteenth-century compilations should note that the dictionary entry conflates two unrelated items — the conveyancing term barganizare and a note on the carrier liability of bargemen — suggesting the original source was printed in close proximity to that separate entry and the compiler included it as a tail note. The bargemen reference has no bearing on barganizare.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary historical source for this term in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill correctly identifies barganizare as Law Latin belonging to old conveyancing practice and provides three conjugated examples drawn from Townshend's Pleas and Pleadings, the Registrum Originale (Reg. Orig. 108), and Leonard's Reports (1 Leon. 58). The citations ground the term in authentic early modern English legal sources.
Burrill does not elaborate on the doctrinal significance of the term's connection to the Statute of Uses or distinguish its use across different conveyancing forms. This is a gap common to dictionary treatments of operative conveyancing words: they confirm meaning and usage without situating the term in the broader regime of real property transfer. Researchers relying solely on Burrill will know what the word means but not why its presence in a particular deed matters for determining how title passed.
No other historical dictionary in the standard shelf — not Black's, not Bouvier's, not Tomlin's — carries a separate entry for barganizare, though all treat bargain and sale as a doctrine. The Latin form is typically absorbed into those discussions rather than treated as a discrete headword.
Jurisdictional Note
Barganizare is a term of English legal history and early colonial American practice. American jurisdictions that received English common law forms will encounter it in colonial-era deeds, particularly in the mid-Atlantic and southern colonies where bargain and sale conveyancing was common. It has no operative force in modern conveyancing in any jurisdiction.