Definition
A Latin term meaning "to believe," "to trust," "to confide in," or "to entrust." In legal usage, *credere* appears primarily in the context of credit and commercial relations, expressing the act by which one party places trust or confidence in another — most commonly by extending goods, money, or other property on the expectation of repayment or return. The term is the root of the modern English legal vocabulary of credit, creditors, and related commercial concepts.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Credere* is a Latin verb not in ordinary modern English usage, though its derivatives — "credit," "credible," "creditor" — are common.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as a standalone English entry; recognized as the Latin root underlying "credit" and "credence."
The gap here is not between common and legal meaning but between the root term and its legal derivatives. Understanding *credere* as a term of art clarifies why sources treat "credit" and "creditor" as relational concepts rooted in trust or belief, not merely financial mechanics.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *credere* in historical legal texts — particularly Latin maxims, medieval pleadings, or early commercial law authorities — should recognize it as a functional term, not merely etymological decoration. Its appearance signals a relationship of trust and extension of property or credit, which carries legal weight in the surrounding context.
The Fleta passage quoted in Burrill is particularly instructive: *mercatores et alii creditores qui bona et catalla sua diversis debitoribus crediderint* frames the creditor relationship explicitly as one of having "trusted" goods to debtors. This framing matters when reading early English commercial law, where the moral and relational dimensions of credit were legally significant — breach of the trust implicit in *credere* could carry implications beyond simple debt recovery.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should watch for *credere* in three contexts: (1) as a component of Latin maxims governing commercial and agency relationships; (2) in compound terms such as *del credere* (see Related Terms), where it forms a distinct legal concept with its own doctrinal history; and (3) in ecclesiastical and civil law sources, where *credere* could carry theological as well as legal weight.
The term also appears in passages invoking the Digest (Dig. 12.1), which addresses loans for consumption (*mutuum*). Researchers consulting that title will find that Roman law treated the extension of goods or money under *credere* as creating obligations on the recipient — a conceptual lineage that runs directly into common law debt and assumpsit.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the essential entry: *credere* as "to believe; to put faith in; to confide; to trust; to entrust with." Burrill anchors the definition in two authoritative sources — the Digest title 12.1 and Fleta, lib. 2, c. 64, § 1 — both of which treat the term in the commercial context of merchants extending goods to debtors.
No substantial divergence exists across available sources because this is a Latin root term with a fixed classical meaning. The interest for legal historians lies not in definitional controversy but in tracing how the relational, trust-based sense of *credere* shaped the development of creditor-debtor law in both civil and common law traditions. Burrill's entry, though brief, is correctly situated: it is a gateway term leading toward more developed doctrines of credit, agency, and commercial obligation.