Definition
To forbarre is to deprive a person of something permanently and completely — to bar them from a right, claim, or thing forever, with no possibility of recovery. The term describes an absolute and final exclusion, as distinct from a temporary suspension or conditional bar.
Why It Matters in Research
Forbarre is an archaic term of art drawn from early common law pleading and appears almost exclusively in historical sources. Researchers encountering it in old writs, pleadings, or treatises should recognize it as signaling a permanent foreclosure of a right rather than a procedural delay or waiver subject to revival. The distinction matters: many historical bars were conditional or could be overcome by subsequent events, whereas forbarre connotes finality.
The term is unlikely to appear in modern case law or statutory materials. When researching older equity or real property disputes — particularly those involving barring of entails, extinguishment of dower rights, or perpetual injunctions framed in historical language — forbarre may appear as descriptive shorthand for the permanent nature of the legal consequence. It should not be confused with the modern procedural "bar" (as in res judicata or statute of limitations bar), which often carries technical requirements and is not inherently permanent in the same absolute sense the historical term implies.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is garbled in the corpus — text from an adjacent "FORCE" entry has been interpolated — so researchers relying on that source should treat the definition with care and cross-check against Bouvier, which provides the cleaner and more reliable version.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier's trace the term to Cowell's Interpreter (1607), the early English legal glossary, citing it without elaboration beyond the core meaning: to deprive one of a thing forever. This uniformity suggests the term had a stable, narrow meaning across the period these dictionaries cover, and that neither American nor English legal lexicographers found reason to expand or contest it.
The brevity of both entries reflects the term's status as received vocabulary rather than a living operative concept by the nineteenth century — acknowledged as part of the inherited legal lexicon but not actively litigated. Researchers should not expect doctrinal development in these sources; both entries function as translational glosses for older English-language legal texts rather than substantive doctrinal guides.
Note that Rapalje & Lawrence's entry as it appears in the Law Mind corpus is corrupted by interpolated text from a neighboring entry on "FORCE," rendering that source unreliable for this term without external verification.