Definition
Hay, straw, and similar feed provided for horses and other animals, particularly in a military context. In its legal and military sense, forage refers specifically to the provisioning of animal feed as a formal matter of supply, requisition, or entitlement — distinct from the colloquial sense of searching for food. In military law and historical administrative practice, forage could also denote the allowance or ration of feed to which an officer's or soldier's horse was entitled, or the demand made upon a civilian population for such supplies by an occupying or passing army.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Fodder for animals, especially cattle and horses; also, an act or instance of searching for food, or the demand for fodder made by an army upon a local population.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Food of any kind for animals, especially horses and cattle, such as grass, pasture, hay, corn, and oats; also, the act of foraging or searching for provisions.
The gap between common and legal meaning is modest but real. In ordinary usage, forage emphasizes the act of searching — foraging — and applies broadly to any animal or even to humans scrounging for food. In legal and military usage, forage is a noun denoting a specific category of military supply or a formal entitlement, not the activity of seeking it. A forage allowance in a military regulation is a fixed ration, not a license to search.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter forage almost exclusively in two contexts within the Law Mind corpus: military law and administrative records, and historical property or agricultural disputes.
In military law sources, forage appears as a term of art for a defined class of supply. Officers were frequently entitled by regulation to a forage allowance for their horses, and disputes over forage pay or forage rations appear in courts-martial records and military pension claims. When reading 18th- and 19th-century military statutes or army regulations, treat forage as a technical term with a specific meaning tied to supply logistics, not a general term for food.
In property and agricultural contexts, forage rights or forage demands could arise when armies requisitioned feed from civilians. This intersects with takings law, impressment, and wartime property claims. Historical sources on military occupation or the law of war may address the legality and compensation owed for forced forage demands — a point relevant to Civil War-era claims research.
The term's appearance in legal dictionaries is thin and uniform: all three source dictionaries offer a single-sentence definition traced to Jacob's Law Dictionary, signaling that forage was not a heavily litigated civilian concept but was understood as military vocabulary absorbed into legal reference works. Researchers should not expect extensive common-law doctrine built around this term; its legal significance is largely administrative and statutory.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.), and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement, each offering the identical one-sentence definition: hay and straw for horses, particularly in the army, with attribution to Jacob's Law Dictionary. The uniformity reflects the term's status as a narrow, settled military supply term rather than a contested legal concept. No definition attempts to address forage allowances, forage rights, or the legal consequences of military forage demands — gaps that matter for any researcher working with military records or wartime property claims. Historical dictionaries treat this as a vocabulary gloss, not a legal doctrine entry. Researchers needing substantive law on military requisition of supplies will need to look beyond dictionary definitions to treatises on military law and the law of war.
Jurisdictional Note
In U.S. military law, forage allowances for officers' horses were governed by federal statutes and army regulations, not state law. The concept has no meaningful variation across state jurisdictions; where it appears in state court records, it is almost always in the context of wartime requisition claims or property disputes involving armies in the field.