Definition
A term from old law (Law Latin: *dissignare*) meaning to break open a seal. The act referred to the physical breaking or violation of a seal affixed to a document, instrument, or enclosure — an act that carried legal significance in an era when sealed documents carried formal evidentiary and contractual weight.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter *dissignare* almost exclusively in pre-modern legal materials, particularly in Law Latin glossaries, old English and Scottish legal records, and treatises rooted in Roman and civil law tradition. The term has no living operational role in modern common law practice.
Its significance in historical research is contextual: the act of breaking a seal was not merely mechanical but legally consequential. In periods when seals authenticated instruments — deeds, writs, letters patent, testamentary documents — unauthorized dissignation could constitute interference with a legal document, tantamount to tampering or spoliation. Researchers working with medieval or early modern English records, ecclesiastical documents, or Scottish institutional writing should understand that *dissignare* signals a legally charged act, not a neutral physical description.
The term appears without elaboration in all four source dictionaries, which suggests it was treated as a known term of art rather than a contested concept. Its brevity in the sources is a research signal: it was a reference term for trained lawyers reading old materials, not a term requiring doctrinal exposition.
Connections within the Law Mind corpus: researchers encountering *dissignare* in a primary source are likely working with materials also referencing *sigillum* (seal), sealed instruments, or formal deed requirements. Cross-referencing entries on seals, deeds, and authentication will provide the surrounding doctrinal framework this term alone does not supply.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill — are in complete agreement: *dissignare* means to break open a seal. All four cite Whishaw as the underlying authority, indicating the dictionaries drew from the same source rather than independently verifying the definition. Whishaw's *A New Law Dictionary* (1829) is the common ancestor here, and researchers should treat the four entries as a single chain of authority rather than four independent confirmations.
Burrill's entry is the most precise in labeling the term "L. Lat." (Law Latin), correctly situating it as a term of the learned legal Latin used in English courts and records rather than classical Latin proper.
None of the dictionaries provide a doctrinal discussion of what legal consequences flowed from an act of *dissignare* — whether it vitiated an instrument, gave rise to liability, or triggered specific procedural consequences. This is a gap. Researchers seeking those answers must look beyond the dictionary literature to treatises on sealed instruments and to institutional writers such as Erskine (cited in adjacent maxims in Black's) for the substantive law surrounding seal-breaking.
The placement of *dissignare* in Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence alongside the maxims *Dissimilium dissimilis est ratio* and *Dissimulatione tollitur injuria* is an artifact of alphabetical arrangement, not a substantive connection. Those maxims are unrelated to *dissignare* and should not be read as contextually linked.
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Jurisdictional Note
*Dissignare* appears in both English and Scottish legal sources. Burrill and Black's root it in old English law; Erskine's *Institutes*, cited in adjacent Black's material, is a foundational Scottish text. The concept of seal-breaking had parallel significance in both systems, though the procedural consequences differed. Researchers working in Scottish historical records should consult Erskine and Stair rather than relying on English common law sources alone.
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