Definition
A Latin term from medieval legal Latin meaning "to hold against" or "to withhold." It describes the act of retaining possession of something in opposition to another's right or claim — holding property or a thing contrary to what is owed or required. The term appears in older common law pleading and procedural contexts, typically to characterize a defendant's wrongful detention of property or rights belonging to another.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term encountered almost exclusively in historical legal materials — pleadings, writs, and treatises from the medieval and early modern common law period. Researchers working in older case records, Latin-form writs, or pre-codification pleading books may encounter contratenere as a characterization of the wrongful act underlying a detinue or related property action.
The term has no modern statutory or case law currency. It does not appear in contemporary pleading and should not be imported into modern legal analysis. Its value is purely interpretive: when it appears in a historical document, it signals that the underlying dispute involves someone holding a thing in defiance of another's entitlement — a precursor to what modern law handles through actions for conversion, replevin, or wrongful detention.
Researchers should note that all three source dictionaries trace the definition to Whishaw's New Law Dictionary (1829), meaning the term's coverage in the Anglo-American legal dictionary tradition flows from a single secondary source rather than from broad judicial or statutory usage. This limits the depth of research available through standard dictionary channels; primary source investigation in plea rolls or writ collections would be necessary to trace the term's actual usage in practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st ed.), Burrill's Law Dictionary, and Black's Law Dictionary (2nd ed.) are in complete agreement: contratenere means "to hold against; to withhold," and all three cite Whishaw as the sole authority. The uniformity across dictionaries reflects the term's narrow circulation in Anglo-American legal writing rather than broad independent verification.
Burrill's entry is marginally more formal, prefacing the definition with the language classification "L. Lat." (Law Latin), which is a useful signal to researchers that this is a term of art from the legal Latin vocabulary of medieval English courts rather than classical Latin. The two Black's editions reproduce the definition without meaningful change.
None of the three sources provide illustrative examples, case references, or contextual discussion beyond the bare definition. This is consistent with the term's status as a specialist vocabulary item from writ-era practice rather than a living doctrinal concept.