Definition
A person who resides, dwells, or abides in a particular place, whether temporarily or more permanently. The term describes a quality of physical presence in a location — a commorant is one who is actually staying or living in a place, as distinguished from one who is merely passing through or who claims a legal connection to a place without physical presence.
The word appears most often in older common law contexts to characterize a person's relationship to a particular parish, town, district, or jurisdiction, especially where that relationship determines legal rights or obligations — such as liability to local taxation, eligibility for poor relief, or the proper venue for legal proceedings.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Ordinarily residing; inhabiting. Also, inhabiting or occupying temporarily.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Ordinarily residing; inhabiting. Also used to describe one inhabiting or occupying temporarily, as Blackstone's formulation: "all freeholders within the precinct . . . and all persons commorant therein."
The common and legal meanings are essentially the same in denotation, but the legal significance lies in what commorancy triggers: in historical legal contexts, being characterized as commorant in a place was not merely a description of physical presence but a legal status with concrete consequences — determining parish obligations, settlement rights, and jurisdictional competence. Common usage carries none of this freight.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter commorant primarily in pre-twentieth-century materials — English common law texts, early American cases touching on poor law settlement, parish records, and jurisdictional questions. The term has largely fallen out of modern legal usage, replaced by domicile, residence, or habitually residing depending on context.
The key research trap is conflating commorant with domicile. Historical sources sometimes use the terms near each other but with distinct purposes: domicile carried (and carries) a more permanent, intention-based meaning, while commorant described actual physical presence without requiring any intent to remain permanently. A traveler sojourning in a town could be its commorant; that same traveler almost certainly retained a domicile elsewhere.
In corpus research, look for commorant and its noun form commorancy together. Burrill and Blackstone both treat commorancy as the parent concept — the condition of dwelling in a place — while commorant names the person in that condition. Sources that use one term typically use or reference the other. The Barnes 162 citation in Bouvier is a reference to Barnes's Notes of Cases in the Court of Common Pleas, a useful signal that this term's legal application was being litigated, not merely defined.
Jurisdictional variation is worth noting: English poor law materials use commorant in the context of settlement examinations, where determining where a pauper was commorant could shift financial responsibility between parishes. Early American materials borrow this usage but with less doctrinal precision, as American poor law developed differently across states.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries agree on the core meaning — physical dwelling or abiding in a place — but vary in emphasis. Black's (both editions) stresses the temporary quality ("dwelling temporarily"), while Bouvier emphasizes the person as one residing in a particular town or district without qualifying the duration. Anderson's is the most grammatically precise, noting that commorant describes a quality ("inhabiting, dwelling, residing") and explicitly connecting it to its derivation of commorancy. Burrill adds the "usually lying in a place" formulation and cites Blackstone's Commentaries (4 Bl. Com. 273), grounding the term in established authority.
The tension between "temporary" dwelling (Black's) and "ordinary" residence (Webster's, Wiktionary) reflects a genuine ambiguity in historical use. Blackstone's own phrasing in the Commentaries encompasses both meanings — a person could be commorant in a place whether their stay was brief or extended, so long as they were actually present and living there. No source attempts a precise durational threshold, and none should be expected to supply one.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the functional legal significance: they define the word without fully conveying why lawyers needed it. The term's primary utility was in establishing a nexus between a person and a place for purposes of assigning legal obligation or jurisdiction — a point clearer in the case law than in the dictionary entries themselves.
Jurisdictional Note
Commorant appears most frequently in English common law authorities and early American materials derived from English poor law and parish administration. In modern American practice, the term is archaic; courts and statutes use residence, domicile, or habitual abode depending on the legal context. Researchers working in Louisiana or other civil law-influenced jurisdictions will find no meaningful local tradition for this term.