Definition
Cates is an archaic English term for provisions, food, or victuals — particularly choice or luxurious foodstuffs. In legal contexts, it appears primarily in older pleadings, contract disputes, and probate or household accounts where the specific nature of supplied goods required enumeration. A creditor supplying food or delicacies to a household might plead a claim for the value of cates furnished. The term carries no technical legal meaning distinct from its common meaning; its legal significance is simply that of a recognized category of goods with ascertainable market value.
The Bouvier's entry reproduced in the Law Mind corpus appears, on examination, to have been misassociated: the text describing railroad cars, receivers' operating expenses, and citations to Federal Reporter decisions relates to the entry CARS, not CATES. Researchers should treat this as a likely indexing or transcription artifact in the source edition.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties. Used in literary and poetic contexts: "Cates for which Apicius could not pay" (Churchill); "Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth" (Browning).
The common and legal meanings of cates are essentially identical. The term's legal significance lies not in any specialized redefinition but in its use as a precise period term for a category of goods in older pleadings, household accounts, and supply contracts. A researcher encountering it in a legal document needs no separate legal gloss — only awareness that it is an archaic English word for (especially fine) food.
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Why It Matters in Research
The principal research trap is the Bouvier's entry itself. The Law Mind corpus reproduces text under "CATES" that substantively discusses railroad receivership law and the treatment of foreign cars as operating expenses. This is almost certainly a page-break or alphabetical misattribution in the source edition — the content belongs under CARS. Researchers relying on Bouvier's for the legal definition of cates will find no useful entry here and should not import the railroad-car doctrine into any analysis of food supply or provisioning disputes.
In historical legal documents — particularly English common law pleadings, estate inventories, household account disputes, and early American colonial records — cates may appear as a line item in claims for goods furnished. Its presence signals a legal context involving supply of provisions, often to wealthy households or institutions. The term drops out of American legal usage by the mid-nineteenth century and is effectively absent from any modern legal document.
Researchers working in early modern English legal materials, colonial American records, or any context involving archaic pleading forms should recognize cates as a period-specific goods term requiring no special legal interpretation beyond its plain meaning.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the sole historical legal dictionary source available for this entry, and as noted above, the reproduced text appears to be a misattribution to this headword. Bouvier's does not offer a substantive legal definition of cates as a distinct legal term, which is itself informative: the word was understood in legal practice as an ordinary English term for food or provisions, requiring no special legal gloss.
Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary agree precisely on the meaning: choice provisions, delicacies, dainties. The literary citations in Webster's (Shakespeare, Churchill, Browning) confirm the word's association with luxurious or fine food specifically, which would have been relevant in legal disputes where the quality and value of provisions furnished were at issue.
No meaningful divergence exists across sources on the substantive meaning. The only point of legal research interest is the Bouvier's misattribution, which historical dictionaries could not have anticipated as a corpus artifact.
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