CORDING

4 definitions found across Law Mind sources

CORDINGAuthored
The Law Mind • 782 words
Definition
The official measurement and inspection of firewood or other goods sold by the cord. Cording refers to the act of measuring, stacking, or verifying that a quantity of wood or similar commodity conforms to the legal standard for a cord — a unit of measure equal to a stack of wood four feet high, four feet wide, and eight feet long (128 cubic feet). In its regulatory sense, cording encompasses both the physical arrangement of the wood and the oversight function performed by appointed public officials to ensure honest dealing in cordwood markets.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Decorative cord, often wrapped in colored fabric or foil; the act of decorating with such cord, or the resulting decoration. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of binding or fastening with cords; also, the ribbed or corded surface of certain fabrics. The gap here is substantial. In ordinary English, cording is a craft or textile term with no commercial or regulatory weight. In historical American law and market regulation, cording was a specific municipal and state function — the measurement and certification of cordwood — backed by penalty statutes and administered by appointed cord-measurers. A researcher encountering "cording" in a nineteenth-century ordinance or commercial code is reading a regulatory term, not a decorative one.
Why It Matters in Research
Cording appears primarily in local ordinances, state market statutes, and municipal regulatory records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in jurisdictions where firewood was a major domestic fuel and commercial commodity. Researchers working in this period should look for cording provisions alongside related market regulations governing the sale of coal, hay, and grain — these were often codified together under general market or assize laws. The office of cord-measurer (also called a measurer of wood or wood-corder) was a recognized public appointment in many American cities. Records of this office — appointments, bonds, fee schedules, and complaint proceedings — may appear in city council minutes, mayoral records, or municipal court filings rather than in general court reporters, making them easy to overlook in standard legal research. Note that the Bouvier's entry retrieved in the source material does not speak to cording directly; the fragment concerns railroad mortgage law and appears to have been returned in error or by proximity in the original index. Researchers should treat Bouvier's as offering no substantive guidance on cording and rely instead on period ordinance compilations and state statutory digests for authoritative definitions of the cord measure and the duties of measuring officers. Jurisdictional variation matters here: the precise legal definition of a cord, the fees chargeable by measurers, and the penalties for short measure varied by state and municipality. Do not assume a uniform national standard when reading historical sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not contain a substantive entry for cording as a legal term. The source fragment retrieved relates to railroad mortgage law and is not germane. This absence is itself informative: by the time Bouvier's later editions were compiled, cording had largely receded from general legal dictionaries into the domain of municipal ordinance and local commercial regulation, suggesting it was treated as sufficiently local and technical that national legal lexicographers did not address it systematically. Earlier American legal practice, however, treated cording as a legitimate regulatory function. Period city charters and market ordinances from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other major cities routinely established cord-measurers as compensated public officers with authority to condemn short-measure wood and impose fines on sellers. The legal content of cording in those sources includes: the dimensional definition of the cord, the measurer's duty to attend at the yard or wharf, fee entitlements, and the evidentiary weight of the measurer's certificate in subsequent dispute proceedings. Researchers consulting Black's Law Dictionary (earlier editions) may find brief acknowledgment of the cord as a unit of measure without extended treatment of the regulatory apparatus. Specialized sources — period municipal code compilations and state statutory digests — will be more productive.
Jurisdictional Note
The cord as a unit of measure was recognized across American jurisdictions but the specific regulatory framework for cording — including who could measure, what fees applied, and what penalties attached to fraud — was established at the state or municipal level. Variation is significant. Research should begin with the jurisdiction-specific ordinance record rather than assuming transferability of standards between cities or states.
Related Terms
Cord (unit of measure) — Measurer of wood — Cord-measurer — Assize — Market regulation — Weights and measures — Short measure — Public market officer — Firewood regulation — Sealer of weights and measures
CORDINGmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
A railroad mortgage is made with refer- ence to the law of the state in which the subject-matter of the contract is, and in which the contract is made; and the law enters into and becomes a part of the con- tract as if it were there in express terms; 25 U. S. App. 415. In the absence of a provision to the con- trary, all bonds secured by a mortgage have an equal lien irrespective of the time at which they were negotiated; 55 Ohio St. 23; 122 Pa. 565; 44 N. E. Rep. (Ohio) 596. First mortgage bonds are prior to second mortgage bonds, even if subsequently nego- tiated; 8 Fed. Rep. 118. The invalidity of some of the bonds does not invalidate the mortgage; 118 U. S. 161. The negotiable character of the bonds extends also to the mortgage securing them, against which the mortgagor cannot defend on grounds which it cannot set up against bona fide holders of bonds; 16 Wall. 271, 452; 130 U. S. 268; 64 Me. 37; 122 Mass. 67; 89 Wis. 146; the rule in Ohio and Illinois is said to be different; 14 Ohio St. 396; 93 III. 433; see 79 Ala. 587. In case of default, an individual bondholder may sue the corporation, but after securing judgment cannot have execution on prop- erty covered by the mortgage, which is security for all the bondholders alike. As to the effect of recitals in bonds as notice, see RECITALS. In the surrender of corporate bonds and the substitution of new bonds, the latter will retain the security of the mortgage, unless an extinguishment was intended; 96 N. C. 298; see, also, 98 Ala. 92; 76 Fed. Rep. 43 (where under a reorganization plan the old bonds were deposited and were to be held by a trustee as additional secur- ity for the old bonds); but not where the mortgage was satisfied of record; 96 N. С. 298. A mere change in the form of the mort- gage debt, such as substituting new bonds for the old, will not affect the lien: nova- tion, especially when against the interest of the bondholders, must be clearly proved; 76 Fed. Rep. 38; and the funding of overdue interest and the issue of new evidence of indebtedness in place of the overdue coupons will not constitute a novation un- less there be clear proof of an intention to waive the lien; 3 Hughes 320; 33 Gratt. 586. A corporate mortgage may cover prop- erty acquired by the corporation after the mortgage is given. This has been sustained upon the theory that though ineffective as a conveyance, the mortgage operates as an executory agreement at- taching to the property when acquired; 63 Fed. Rep. 891. This rule, though contrary to the common law, has been established from necessity in the case of railroads, public policy requiring that a railroad be preserved intact as quasi-public property. The rule will be applied only where the mortgage expressly covers the subsequently acquired property. A railroad mortgage covers the road, although the route differs from that originally laid out. It covers, also, a right of way acquired subsequently to the mortgage, though here the mortgage would be strictly construed, and while held to apply to property used for railroad pur- poses, it would be held not to apply if not so used; 122 U. S. 82. It covers terminal facilities upon a line of railroad constructed or to be constructed between the named termini, together with all stations, etc.; 138 U. S. 414. See TERMINAL FACILITIES. It applies not only to legal titles but also to equitable rights and interests subsequently acquired either by or for the company; 149 U. S. 327; 130 id. 413; 164 id. 1; it embraces the lease of a belt line around a city acquired after the execution of the mortgage; 22 U. S. App. 54. It does not cover uncalled capital: [1897] 1 Ch. 406. Where the property acquired is at the time subject to existing liens, these liens are prior in right to the lien of the mortgage; 12 Wall. 362; 81 Fed. Rep. 772. See FUTURE
cordingnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
Decorative cord, often wrapped in colored fabric or foil | The resultant decoration, or the act of decorating with cording
cordingverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
present participle and gerund of cord

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