Definition
An archaic term meaning a tenth part. DISME carries two distinct historical applications:
1. Ecclesiastical and civil taxation: A tenth portion of income or produce, equivalent in legal usage to a tithe — specifically, the tenth of all spiritual livings owed to the clergy under English ecclesiastical law.
2. Currency: The early spelling of "dime," the ten-cent coin of the United States. The spelling DISME appears in the Coinage Act of 1792, which authorized the first American decimal currency and used this older form of the word.
Both senses derive from the same root meaning — one-tenth — but they belong to entirely separate legal contexts separated by several centuries of usage.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A dime minted in 1792; or a tenth part, a tithe.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A tenth; a tenth part; a tithe.
The common and legal meanings here are closely aligned, but the legal record splits in a direction ordinary usage does not reflect. In common English the word simply meant one-tenth and faded from use. In legal sources, DISME bifurcated: in ecclesiastical law it remained tied to clerical revenue obligations, while in American constitutional and monetary law it survived specifically as the name of a coin. A researcher encountering DISME in an American legal document after 1792 is almost certainly reading about currency, not tithes.
Common Confusion
DISME, DIME, and TITHE are easily conflated in historical research. TITHE is the broader ecclesiastical concept of a tenth-part offering or tax, with its own extensive legal history in canon and common law. DISME in the ecclesiastical sense is effectively synonymous with tithe in certain contexts but appears far less frequently and primarily in sources referencing English statute law. DIME is the modern American spelling of the same word used for the coin; when researchers encounter DISME in early American legal or numismatic sources, it refers to the coin, not to an ecclesiastical levy. The cross-reference entries in both Bouvier and Rapalje & Lawrence redirect simply to DIME, signaling that by the time those dictionaries were compiled the ecclesiastical usage was largely obsolete in American practice.
Why It Matters in Research
DISME is a navigational trap for researchers working across different historical periods or legal traditions. The same word points in at least two directions, and the relevant corpus materials are unlikely to appear in the same place.
Researchers working in English ecclesiastical law or canon law will find DISME as a synonym for tithe, particularly in connection with 2 and 3 Edw. III c. 35 and related parliamentary statutes governing clerical revenues. English sources from the medieval and early modern period use DISME (or DÎME in legal French) in this sense, and the word appears in Year Books and ecclesiastical court records. These sources will not use the word to refer to currency.
Researchers working in early American legal history — monetary law, constitutional law, numismatic law — will find DISME in the Coinage Act of 1792, where it is the statutory name for what became the dime. This is an entirely different body of law. The Coinage Act usage is a deliberate archaism chosen at the founding period; by the early nineteenth century the spelling had standardized to DIME and DISME disappeared from American statutory text.
The Law Mind corpus likely contains DISME primarily in two clusters: ecclesiastical law treatises and early American monetary law materials. Searching without awareness of this split will produce confusing, apparently unrelated results. When searching historical indices, check whether the source predates or postdates American independence, and whether the surrounding subject matter is ecclesiastical or commercial.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Bouvier and Rapalje & Lawrence treat DISME as essentially a forwarding entry, redirecting the reader to DIME. This editorial choice reflects the state of American legal practice by the mid-to-late nineteenth century: the ecclesiastical sense of the word had little practical relevance in American courts, and the coin sense had standardized its spelling. Neither dictionary elaborates on the ecclesiastical history at the DISME entry itself.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the more informative of the two, noting explicitly that DISME meant a tenth of all spiritual livings and citing 2 and 3 Edw. III c. 35 — an English statute governing clerical taxation. This places the ecclesiastical usage firmly in English legal history and implicitly signals its foreignness to American practice.
Webster's 1913 confirms that the common meaning was simply one-tenth, with no distinction between the ecclesiastical and monetary applications. This suggests the split between the two legal senses was already invisible to general readers by the time these reference works were compiled.
What the historical dictionaries miss: neither source explains the Coinage Act connection or the deliberate use of the archaic spelling in founding-era American law. A researcher relying solely on these dictionaries would not know that DISME had a specific statutory life in American monetary law independent of its ecclesiastical history.
Jurisdictional Note
In English law, DISME belongs to ecclesiastical law and the history of clerical revenue obligations, governed by parliamentary statute and canon law. In American law, the word appears almost exclusively in the context of the 1792 Coinage Act and early monetary history. The ecclesiastical sense never took root in American legal practice, which had no established church to sustain it.