Definition
To withhold or hold against. A Latin term of medieval English law denoting the act of withholding something — typically money, property, or an entitlement — from a person entitled to receive it. The term appears in the context of legal actions where a party unlawfully retains what another has a right to demand.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is functionally obsolete in modern legal writing and will not appear in contemporary case law or statutes. Researchers encounter it almost exclusively in older English legal sources, writs, and pleading records, particularly those dealing with actions for withholding assets or contributions in estate administration.
The fragment preserved in Rapalje & Lawrence links contratinere to the administration of assets — specifically to contribution obligations that arise when one party in a distribution holds more than their rightful share, or refuses to yield what is owed to co-distributees. Researchers working in probate history, medieval English procedure, or the history of equitable contribution should note this connection.
Because the Rapalje & Lawrence entry is truncated — the surviving text breaks off mid-sentence — the full doctrinal context is lost. Researchers should treat this source as a signpost rather than a complete authority and consult parallel sources such as Whishaw's New Law Dictionary (cited within the entry), Spelman's Glossarium, or Blount's Nomo-Lexicon for fuller treatment of the term's procedural role.
The term belongs to a cluster of Latin action-words in common law pleading that describe the manner in which a wrong is committed — holding against, withholding, detaining — and should be read alongside detinere and its associated writs when reconstructing historical pleading contexts.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define contratinere as "to withhold or hold against," citing Whishaw. The entry, as preserved, connects the term to contribution in the context of asset administration, though the text is incomplete. No further definition or doctrinal elaboration survives in this source.
Whishaw's New Law Dictionary is the authoritative upstream source cited here. Researchers who need the fuller passage should consult Whishaw directly. Neither Bouvier's Law Dictionary nor Black's Law Dictionary (early editions) carry this term as a standalone entry, which confirms that contratinere had largely passed out of active American legal vocabulary by the mid-nineteenth century.
The historical dictionaries agree on the core meaning — withholding or holding against — but the corpus is thin. The term's significance in historical sources lies less in its own definition than in what it reveals about the procedural vocabulary surrounding older actions for recovery of withheld property or shares.
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Jurisdictional Note
Contratinere is a term of English legal Latin with no distinct American jurisdictional development. It does not appear as a term of art in American statutory or common law. Its relevance is confined to English legal history and the interpretation of historical English pleadings, writs, and treatises.
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