Definition
A Latin term from old English law meaning to unload or discharge a vessel or ship. It appears most often in the paired phrase carcare et discarcare — to load and unload — which described the physical act of lading and unlading cargo from a ship. The derivative noun discarcatio refers to the act or process of unloading itself.
The term belongs to the technical vocabulary of medieval maritime and commercial law, where precise description of cargo handling was necessary for port regulations, customs duties, and merchant obligations. It carried no broader sense of legal release or acquittal; its meaning was strictly physical and transactional.
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Why It Matters in Research
DISCARCARE is a narrow archaic term unlikely to appear in any modern legal context. Researchers will encounter it only in medieval English legal records, Year Books, and parliamentary plea rolls — particularly those of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Burrill notes a specific reference in Placita Parliamentaria (18 Edw. I), which provides a concrete anchor for researchers working in that documentary record.
The paired formula carcare et discarcare functions almost like a legal doublet — a coordinated expression designed to cover both directions of a single commercial act. Researchers familiar with Latin legal doublets will recognize the pattern: the pairing ensured comprehensive coverage in port regulations and customs grants without ambiguity about whether a grant or prohibition applied to loading, unloading, or both.
One navigational note: Burrill flags that the Salic law uses the spelling discargare rather than discarcare. Researchers working across continental and English sources must account for this orthographic variation, as the two spellings reference the same concept but appear in distinct documentary traditions. Searching only one spelling in a manuscript corpus will produce incomplete results.
The term's derivative, discarcatio, appears in Townshend's Placita (cited by Burrill at p. 226) and may be encountered separately in plea records where the noun form was preferred over the verbal. Researchers should index both forms.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: to discharge or unload a vessel. Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill all trace the definition through Cowell's Interpreter, indicating that Cowell was the primary conduit through which the term entered the English legal dictionary tradition. Rapalje & Lawrence offer the most economical entry — simply "to unlade a ship or vessel" with a Cowell citation — without adding independent analysis.
Burrill's entry is the most substantive and earns its place as the primary reference. It supplies the Latin formation (dis + carcare), the Salic law spelling variant, the parliamentary plea citation, and the noun form discarcatio with a separate source. This additional apparatus makes Burrill considerably more useful than Black's for any researcher who needs to trace the term into primary sources rather than simply confirm its meaning.
Black's 2nd ed. entry appears corrupt in the surviving text — it trails off mid-sentence with language about repudiating unauthorized acts that plainly belongs to a different entry. Researchers should not rely on that edition's entry for this term and should default to Burrill or Black's 1st ed.
None of the historical dictionaries situate the term within a broader discussion of medieval maritime law or explain the practical regulatory context in which carcare et discarcare appeared. The dictionaries treat it as a vocabulary item requiring translation, not as a concept requiring analysis. That limitation is typical for archaic Latin entries across the historical dictionary shelf.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Maritime Law (Historical); Customs and Port Regulation (Medieval English Law).
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