Definition
A Latin term from Roman law meaning "I will give." Dabo was one of the ritual words used in forming a verbal stipulation (stipulatio) under classical Roman law. When a party wished to create a binding oral obligation, the transaction required a formal exchange: the creditor asked a question using a corresponding term (dabis? — "will you give?"), and the debtor responded dabo — "I will give." The question-and-answer exchange had to be congruent and uninterrupted for a valid stipulation to arise. Dabo thus functioned as the debtor's operative verbal act of commitment, not merely an expression of intent.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard English entry. "Dabo" does not exist as a common English word.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed.
Editorial note: This is pure Roman legal terminology with no common English counterpart. The term is intelligible only in the context of stipulatio formalism and has no life outside that technical legal setting.
Why It Matters in Research
Dabo is primarily encountered in sources dealing with Roman law procedure and the law of obligations — not in English common law materials. Researchers working in legal history, civilian tradition scholarship, or comparative law will find it relevant; those working in common law sources will encounter it only in passing references or in medieval treatises that drew on Roman foundations.
The term appears in Bracton, which is the principal pathway through which Roman stipulation concepts entered English legal literature. Bracton's borrowings from Roman law are notoriously selective and sometimes imprecise, so researchers should treat his use of Roman terminology as filtered rather than faithful to classical sources. When Bracton cites the Institutes on this point, he is invoking Roman doctrinal authority to frame English concepts of contractual obligation — not importing Roman procedure wholesale.
For corpus researchers: dabo will appear in Latin-language passages of medieval English legal texts and in scholarly commentary on those texts. It will not appear as an operative term in English case law. Searches should pair it with stipulatio, dare, and related Roman obligatory terms to capture the full doctrinal context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) presents dabo in the context of stipulatio formation, citing Justinian's Institutes (3.15.1) and Bracton (fol. 15b). The entry is terse but accurate: it correctly identifies dabo as one of the forms of verbal stipulation and pairs it with the interrogatory dabis?
The Institutes passage Black's cites (Inst. 3.15.1) establishes that the stipulatio required congruence between question and answer — dabis? / dabo being one recognized pair alongside spondes? / spondeo (the archaic form reserved for Roman citizens) and facies? / faciam (for obligations to do an act). The word dare, from which dabo derives, specifically denoted transfer of property or money, distinguishing it from facere (to do or perform) in the classical taxonomy of obligations.
No other historical dictionaries in the present corpus carry this entry. The coverage gap is expected: dabo is a specialist Roman law term that common law dictionaries generally omit unless, like Black's Supplemental, they reach into civilian sources for completeness.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Stipulatio; Roman Law of Obligations