Definition
To impound; to place animals or goods within a pound or enclosure by legal authority. The term describes the act of seizing and confining stray animals or distrained goods in a designated enclosure — the pound — pending resolution of a legal claim, payment of a fee, or satisfaction of a debt. It is the operative verb corresponding to the noun "impoundment" and the institution of the pound.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term will find it almost exclusively in early English legal texts and their direct descendants. It is a term of practice rather than doctrine — appearing in procedural contexts around distress, pound, and impoundment — and it is largely absent from American legal sources, which adopted the vocabulary of impoundment rather than preserving the Norman French root. The gap between this term and its functional modern equivalent (to impound) is purely linguistic; the underlying legal concept survives intact in animal control statutes, distress proceedings, and landlord-tenant law. A researcher tracing the history of impoundment doctrine should treat emparker, imparcare, and impound as functionally synonymous terms across different periods and linguistic registers. Britton, cited by Burrill, is the relevant primary source for the procedural context; it is a late-thirteenth-century English legal treatise compiled under Edward I, and researchers should locate it in Law Mind's historical treatise materials when examining the pound-related procedure of that era.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the only shelf source to carry this term, and its entry is appropriately spare: the Norman French derivation from en and parke (the pound), the Latin equivalent imparcare, and a citation to Britton chapters 21 and 51. Burrill does not elaborate on the procedural mechanics, which reflects the term's status as a term of art whose meaning was assumed to be understood in context. The Latin form imparcare appears in medieval writs and plea rolls and will be encountered by researchers working in manuscript or early printed sources. Neither Jacob's Law Dictionary, Bouvier, nor Black's preserves this term, which signals how early it fell out of active legal use in favor of Anglicized vocabulary. Researchers should not interpret its absence from American dictionaries as evidence that the practice it describes was unknown in American law — impoundment as a remedy traveled well; the Norman French verb did not.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is historical English law. No American jurisdiction uses emparker in statute or case law. The equivalent concept appears in modern American law under impound, impoundment, and pound, with significant variation in procedure across states, particularly in the animal control and landlord-tenant contexts.