Definition
The act of buying; a purchase. In civil and contract law, emption refers to the completed act of acquisition by purchase — the buyer's side of the transaction that constitutes a contract of sale. Derived from Roman law, where *emptio venditio* (purchase and sale) named the bilateral contract of exchange, emption isolates the buyer's role: the acquisition of a thing or right in exchange for a price.
Emption appears most often in historical legal texts and in discussions of Roman-influenced private law. It is rarely encountered in modern common law drafting or litigation but remains a live term in civil law jurisdictions and in historical legal scholarship.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act of buying; purchase.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of buying." [R.] — marked as rare even by 1913.
The common and legal meanings here are nearly identical, but the rarity flag in Webster's matters for researchers: by the early twentieth century, emption had already retreated from ordinary English into specialist legal and scholarly usage. The legal term is not a technical distortion of the common word — it is simply the surviving form of a word that general English largely abandoned.
Common Confusion
Emption is sometimes confused with the Bouvier's entry for PREMIUM or PRIZE in contract contexts. The Bouvier's entry reproduced above appears to describe a *premium* or competitive reward offer — a contract between an offeror and competing performers — rather than emption in its classical sense. This may reflect a transcription or cross-reference error in the source. Researchers relying on that Bouvier's passage should treat it with caution: the definition given does not match the understood legal meaning of emption and likely belongs under a different headword. Emption proper means purchase, not prize or reward.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research risk with emption is the source corruption noted above. If you encounter the Bouvier's entry as reproduced here, the definition given — describing a prize offered to whoever accomplishes a condition, such as writing the best essay — is not a recognized meaning of emption. It reads as a misplaced entry, possibly for *premium* or *praemium*. Do not carry that definition forward into research without independent verification from a reliable edition of Bouvier's or from a civil law treatise.
For legitimate uses of the term, emption appears in:
— Roman law discussions of *emptio venditio*, the foundational bilateral sale contract. Researchers tracing the civil law roots of modern sales doctrine will encounter it frequently in treatises on Roman private law and in Louisiana, Quebec, and Scottish legal materials.
— Pre-twentieth century common law texts that retained Latinate contract vocabulary. When reading older equity or commercial law opinions, emption signals a purchase and should be read accordingly.
— Pre-emption and co-emption: the most practically significant modern descendants of this root. Pre-emption (the right to buy before others) and co-emption (buying up an entire supply) both embed emption as their operative core. A researcher who understands emption will parse these compound terms more accurately. See RELATED TERMS.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary historical dictionary source available here, and — as noted — the entry reproduced is unreliable for emption in its classical sense. The Webster's 1913 entry is brief but accurate: "the act of buying," marked rare, with a citation to Arbuthnot. This rarity notation is itself historically significant: it confirms that by the early twentieth century, emption had ceased to function as a living English word and persisted mainly in legal and scholarly registers.
Historical legal dictionaries in the civilian tradition (not represented in the current source set) treat emption more fully. Civilian sources consistently define it as the buyer's side of the sale contract, complementary to *venditio* (sale from the seller's perspective). The Roman law pairing *emptio venditio* treated the transaction as a single consensual contract rather than two separate acts — a conceptual point that distinguishes civilian from common law sale doctrine and that researchers in comparative law will need to track carefully.
Jurisdictional Note
Emption as an active legal concept is most relevant in civil law jurisdictions — Louisiana, Quebec, and mixed systems influenced by Roman law. In common law jurisdictions, the term is historical and doctrinal rather than operative; it appears in scholarship and older texts but not in modern statutes or pleadings.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Sale and Purchase
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Roman Law Foundations of Contract
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Pre-emption Rights