Definition
An entrebat is a Law French term for an intruder or interloper — a person who wrongfully enters upon land or inserts themselves into a matter, right, or transaction to which they have no lawful claim or standing. The term appears in medieval English legal writing as a descriptor for one who unlawfully occupies or interferes with property or a legal position belonging to another.
Common Confusion
ENTREBAT, intruder, and disseisor occupy overlapping conceptual territory but are not synonymous. A disseisor is one who wrongfully dispossesses another of freehold — a more specific legal act with a defined common law remedy. An intruder, in the technical medieval sense, is one who enters after the death of a tenant without right, before the heir or reversioner takes possession. ENTREBAT appears to be the broader or more colloquial label, encompassing both but without the technical precision those terms carry in common law pleading. Researchers working in medieval property law should not treat these as interchangeable.
Why It Matters in Research
ENTREBAT is a term of historical interest only. It does not appear in modern statutory or case law and is not used in contemporary pleading or legal argument. Researchers encountering it will find it exclusively in medieval or early modern legal sources — principally in Britton, the 13th-century Anglo-Norman legal treatise that systematized English common law in Law French. The standard citation across historical dictionaries is Britton, chapter 114, which treats wrongful entry and dispossession.
The practical research value of ENTREBAT is limited to decoding archaic sources. When working through Law French texts, Year Books, or early treatises, a researcher who encounters the term should understand it as equivalent to the broader concept of intrusion or wrongful entry — the unauthorized assumption of a possessory interest — rather than any technically distinct cause of action. The word itself carries the meaning embedded in its root ("entre," to enter), making it largely self-explanatory in context once identified as Law French.
Researchers should also note that the historical dictionaries cite Britton uniformly but do not elaborate on any procedural context in which the term operated as a term of art. It appears to function descriptively rather than as a technical pleading term with defined elements. Do not import modern precision into this word; it was a general label for a category of wrongful actor.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's — agree entirely on the meaning and cite the same single authority: Britton, chapter 114. The entries are nearly identical, suggesting that later lexicographers simply carried forward Black's original treatment without independent investigation. No source elaborates on procedural context, and none distinguishes ENTREBAT from related terms such as intruder or disseisor. The uniformity of treatment across dictionaries, combined with the brevity of the entries, signals that this term was already archaic by the time the major legal dictionaries were compiled in the 19th century.
Black's 2nd edition preserves a fragment — "An intruder or" — suggesting the original manuscript entry was longer but was not fully recovered or reproduced, a minor textual artifact worth noting if cross-referencing that edition directly.