Definition
To proceed or act according to equity; to adjudicate or determine a matter in conformity with equitable principles rather than strict rules of law. The term is a Latinate verb form reflecting the medieval jurisprudential concept of equity as a corrective or moderating force applied to the rigidity of common law rules.
In practice, to equitate is to bring equity to bear on a legal question — to measure a right, remedy, or obligation by standards of conscience, fairness, and good dealing rather than by technical legal form alone.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not a recognized entry in standard modern English dictionaries. The term has no common vernacular use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. "Equitate" does not appear in Webster's 1913 as an English word.
The term is pure legal Latin carried into English-language legal usage through medieval treatise tradition. There is no meaningful gap between a common and legal meaning to resolve — the word has no life outside legal and jurisprudential contexts.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term will not appear in modern American legal materials. Researchers encountering "equitate" or the adverbial form "equitate" (sometimes rendered as "æquitate" in manuscript sources) are almost certainly working in medieval or early modern English legal texts, canon law sources, or Latin-language treatises. Fleta — the late-13th-century English legal treatise from which Black's sources the term — is the primary textual home for this word in the Anglo-American tradition.
The practical research value is navigational: if you encounter this term, it signals that the surrounding text is operating in the register of equity jurisdiction as conceived before the Chancery courts were fully systematized. The concept underlying the word — that a judge or court can act "according to equity" as a distinct modality from acting "according to law" — is the doctrinal ancestor of the entire equity jurisprudence that later structured Chancery practice, and eventually the merged law-and-equity systems of modern American federal and state courts.
Researchers working in the history of equitable remedies, the origins of conscience-based jurisdiction, or the foundations of restitution doctrine may find this term as a marker pointing toward source material worth tracing forward. It connects the scholastic natural law tradition (where aequitas was a jurisprudential concept with theological dimensions) to the procedural equity that eventually produced doctrines like laches, unjust enrichment, and specific performance.
Do not expect this term in any index, digest, or case reporter. It is a term of art found in treatise literature, not in judicial opinions.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) renders the entry as: "According to equity; in equity. Fleta, lib. 3, c. 10, § 3." The entry is sparse — characteristic of Black's treatment of Latin terms that function more as doctrinal markers than as operative legal concepts with developed case law.
Note that the source entry as preserved contains a transcription artifact ("TATE" rather than "EQUITATE"), suggesting either a printing corruption or an indexing truncation in the supplemental volume. The full term is recoverable from context and from the Fleta citation.
No other standard historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — Bouvier, Jacob, Tomlin, or Burrill — appear to carry a dedicated entry for this term, which reflects its narrow textual provenance. The concept it names, however, is pervasive: virtually every historical equity treatise (Story, Spence, Maitland) discusses aequitas as the animating principle of equitable jurisdiction, even without using this specific verb form.
The Fleta citation places the term's authoritative use in Book 3, Chapter 10 — a section of Fleta dealing with the jurisdictional and procedural competences of royal courts, where the distinction between proceeding at law and proceeding in equity was being worked out in practical terms.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term itself carries no jurisdictional variation, as it belongs to a pre-jurisdictional layer of legal Latin. The equitable principles it names, however, vary substantially across American jurisdictions, particularly following the merger of law and equity in federal courts under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and in state court systems that have adopted comparable mergers.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia: Impossibility and Impracticability as Defenses to Equitable Relief
The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia: Remedies — Rescission and Restitution as Equitable Remedies
The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia: Laches — Equitable Time Bar and Prejudice Requirement
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