Definition
To depute is to appoint, authorize, or designate another person to act in one's place or on one's behalf, typically for a specific purpose or function. The term carries the sense of conferring authority — not merely asking someone to act, but formally vesting them with the power to do so.
In legal usage, depute most commonly appears in two overlapping senses:
1. To appoint a deputy or agent. One who deputes another transfers a portion of their own authority to that person, enabling the deputy to act with legal effect in the principal's name. The appointment may be general (broad authority to act) or special (limited to a defined task or occasion).
2. To delegate a specific function or duty. In older legal and administrative writing, depute could describe the assignment of a task or responsibility to a subordinate without necessarily creating a full deputyship. The distinction between deputing a person and delegating a task is fine but occasionally significant in historical sources.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To assign someone or something to or for something; to delegate a task to a subordinate; to deputize someone by appointing them as deputy; or simply to appoint or choose.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To appoint as deputy or agent; to commission to act in one's place; to delegate." Also, more broadly, "to appoint; to assign; to choose," as in designating a location for a particular purpose.
The legal and common meanings are closely aligned here, but the legal use is narrower: in law, deputing someone implies a formal conferral of authority with legal consequences for acts done in that capacity. The Webster's secondary sense — deputing a place or thing for a purpose — has no recognized legal application and should not be imported into legal reading.
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Common Confusion
DEPUTE / DEPUTE vs. DEPUTIZE: In modern American English, "deputize" has largely displaced "depute" in both common and legal writing. The two words describe the same act. Researchers encountering "depute" in older American or British sources should read it as equivalent to "deputize" without inferring any additional technical content.
DEPUTE vs. DELEGATE: These terms overlap but are not identical. To delegate typically emphasizes the transfer of a task or decision-making function; to depute emphasizes the appointment of a person with authority to act. In many historical sources the words are used interchangeably, but careful drafting treats delegation as the broader concept and deputation as a specific form of it involving a named representative.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term appears primarily in older English legal materials — statutes, treatises, and common law pleading — and in Scottish legal usage, where "depute" has remained in active professional vocabulary far longer than in English or American law. In Scots law, "advocate depute" is still a formal office title, and the word carries institutional weight that its near-disappearance from American legal writing can obscure.
Researchers working in colonial American records, early federal administrative materials, or ecclesiastical law sources will encounter "depute" in contexts where the modern equivalent would simply be "appoint" or "deputize." The functional meaning is stable across these sources; what varies is the formal structure of the authority being conferred and whether the deputation creates an agency relationship in the modern sense.
Burrill's entry is notably truncated — the definition breaks off mid-sentence before completing the explanation — which means researchers relying solely on Burrill for the full legal sense of the term will need to supplement from other sources. The fragment "To appoint or designate for a particular purpose" captures the core, but Burrill does not address the authority question or the relationship between depute and agency doctrine.
In chancery and ecclesiastical records, deputing was a recognized mechanism for extending the reach of a court or official — a bishop might depute jurisdiction, a judge might depute a commissioner. The act of deputing in these contexts had procedural consequences: acts done by the deputed person within the scope of the deputation were treated as acts of the principal.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides only a fragment: "To appoint or designate for a particular purpose." This is consistent with, but less complete than, the sense given in Webster's 1913 and the common law background. Burrill's entry is interrupted by the adjacent entry for DERAIGN, suggesting a typesetting or editorial truncation in the source text — not a sign that the term was considered unimportant, but a practical limitation for researchers.
Webster's 1913 offers the most usable full definition among the available sources, and its primary legal sense — "to commission to act in one's place" — aligns with how the term operates in legal instruments. Webster's secondary sense ("to appoint a place or thing for a purpose") is a broader literary usage that does not carry over into legal contexts and can be set aside for legal research purposes.
Neither source addresses the Scots law usage or the distinction between general and special deputation, gaps that matter in historical research involving Scottish courts or colonial jurisdictions influenced by Scottish legal practice.
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Jurisdictional Note
In Scots law, "depute" remains a living term of art. The title "advocate depute" designates Crown counsel in criminal prosecutions, and "sheriff depute" was historically the principal judicial officer of a sheriffdom. Researchers working with Scottish materials should treat the term as carrying these specific institutional meanings rather than the generic English sense of appointment.
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