Definition
An obsolete variant spelling of IMPARL. To emparl meant, in early common law pleading, to obtain leave of court to confer or speak with the opposing party — effectively, to request a continuance or delay for the purpose of attempting settlement or preparing a response. The term carried no substantive meaning distinct from its standard form; the variation is purely orthographic and reflects the transitional state of legal English spelling in medieval and early modern practice.
Common Confusion
EMPARL vs. IMPARL: These are not two terms with related but distinct meanings. They are the same term in different orthographic dress. The confusion risk is not misunderstanding the law but misreading the historical record — treating a variant spelling as a separate procedural concept, or conducting research under one spelling while missing authority filed under the other.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational hazard in historical sources. Researchers working in early plea rolls, Year Books, or pre-seventeenth-century legal manuscripts will encounter EMPARL and EMPARLANCE alongside IMPARL and IMPARLANCE without any signal that the terms are identical in meaning. Treating them as distinct entries — or failing to search both spellings — produces gaps in a corpus search.
The key research point: EMPARL is the entry point; IMPARL is the substance. Any serious research into the doctrine of imparlance (the procedural right to delay and confer) must be conducted under IMPARL and IMPARLANCE. EMPARL functions in the corpus almost exclusively as an archaic orthographic artifact. It appears in Cowell, Blount, and Finch's Law precisely because those sources preserved older spellings that had already been largely superseded by the time systematic law reporting matured.
Burrill flags this directly: the ancient orthography is, in strictness, correct — meaning EMPARL is the etymologically prior form, derived from the Old French enparler/emparler (to speak together), and IMPARL is the anglicized evolution. Historical dictionaries that list only one form without cross-referencing the other should be used with caution when conducting exhaustive searches.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source for this entry and treats EMPARL as a straightforward cross-reference to IMPARL, noting the parallel relationship between EMPARLANCE and IMPARLANCE. Burrill cites Cowell's Interpreter, Blount's Law Dictionary, and Finch's Law (book 4, chapter 42) as authorities for the older spelling, and he endorses the etymological correctness of the E- prefix form while acknowledging that I- had become standard usage.
No significant doctrinal disagreement exists across historical dictionaries on this term because EMPARL carries no independent legal content — the dispute, to the extent any exists, is purely philological. What historical sources collectively miss is any practical guidance for the modern researcher: these entries record the spelling variant but do not flag the search-strategy implications of encountering either form in a manuscript or printed source.