FRAUDARE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

FRAUDAREAuthored

The Law Mind • 870 words

Definition

A Latin verb from the civil law meaning to deceive, cheat, or impose upon; to defraud. Fraudare denotes the act of intentional deception causing injury to another — the verbal root from which the noun fraus and the broader English legal vocabulary of fraud descend. In Roman law usage, fraudare captured the active commission of deceptive conduct, particularly in contexts involving creditors, trusts, and obligations. It does not describe a formal cause of action but rather the operative act underlying fraudulent conduct as a legal wrong.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No current English entry; the term is Latin and does not appear in modern general dictionaries as a living word.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not entered. Webster's 1913 treats fraud and defraud as the operative English terms; fraudare is not recognized as an English word.

The gap here is directional rather than definitional. Fraudare is not a term that migrated into common English usage — it remained a term of art within civil law scholarship and legal Latin. Researchers encountering it are always in a Latin-language legal context, not a vernacular one.

Common Confusion

Fraudare is sometimes loosely treated as synonymous with fraus (the noun) or dolus (intentional wrongdoing). These are related but distinct. Fraus is the condition or quality of fraud; fraudare is the act of committing it. Dolus in Roman law carried its own doctrinal weight, particularly in contract, and should not be collapsed into fraudare without attention to context. Researchers reading historical civil law texts should treat these as overlapping but not interchangeable.

Why It Matters in Research

Fraudare appears almost exclusively in civil law sources and in common law treatises that engage directly with Roman law foundations. Its significance in the Law Mind corpus is primarily as a bridge term — it surfaces in discussions of fraud's historical roots, in glossaries appended to civil law commentaries, and in maxim collections where Latin legal principles are stated in their original form.

The most practically important appearance of fraudare in the historical record is through the maxim Nemo videtur fraudare eos qui sciunt et consentiunt — no one is considered to have defrauded those who know and consent. This principle from Digest 50.17.145 appears in Burrill and related sources and connects directly to the common law defenses of consent and assumption of risk in fraud actions. Researchers tracing the doctrinal ancestry of these defenses will find fraudare as the operative verb in the foundational maxim.

A trap in historical sources: some dictionary entries for fraudare bleed immediately into definitions of fraud (the English concept) without clearly marking the transition. The Black's first edition entry is a notable example — it shifts mid-entry from defining fraudare to discussing actual versus constructive fraud under English and American law. This conflation can mislead a researcher into treating Roman civil law doctrine and nineteenth-century American equity doctrine as more continuous than they are.

Jurisdictional relevance is limited for working practitioners but significant for legal historians. Fraudare as a term appears with greater frequency in sources from Louisiana, Quebec, and other mixed civil law jurisdictions where Roman law foundations received more sustained doctrinal attention.

Historical Dictionary Support

The four source dictionaries are in complete agreement on the core definition: to deceive, cheat, or impose upon; to defraud. There is no meaningful divergence on what fraudare means. The variation is in what each source does with the term after defining it.

Burrill offers the most precise and historically grounded treatment. He provides the Latin maxim, its Digest citation, and a plain-English gloss on its legal significance — making his entry the most useful for a researcher seeking to understand how fraudare functioned doctrinally rather than merely lexically.

Bouvier transitions immediately from the definition into a discussion of the Statute of Frauds, which is thematically adjacent but etymologically opportunistic. The entry is not wrong, but it uses fraudare as a launching point for English statutory law rather than illuminating the civil law term itself.

The Black's entries (both editions) similarly drift toward English fraud doctrine. The second edition entry is cleaner, holding closer to the Latin definition before pivoting to fraudulent alienation — a collateral topic that shares a root but not a doctrinal lineage with fraudare proper.

What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: none explores how fraudare interacts with the distinction between dolus malus and culpa in Roman contract law, or how the concept of scientia (knowledge) embedded in the Nemo videtur maxim shaped later equitable fraud doctrine. Researchers looking for that analysis will need to move beyond dictionary sources to civil law treatises.

Jurisdictional Note

Fraudare as a term of art appears most frequently in civil law jurisdictions and in American courts or treatises engaging with Roman law foundations. In common law jurisdictions, the concept is fully subsumed under English-language fraud doctrine; the Latin term has no independent operative significance in modern pleading or decision.

FRAUDAREmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In the civil law. To de- Fraud may be actual or constructive. Actual fraud consists in any kind of artifice by which another is deceived. Constructive fraud consists in any act of omission or com- mission contrary to legal or equitable duty, ceive, cheat, or impose upon; to defraud. trust, or confidence justly reposed, which is contrary to good conscience and operates to the injury of another. The former implies moral guilt; the latter may be consistent with innocence. Code Ga. 1882, § 3173. Actual fraud is otherwise called "fraud in fact." FRAUDS, STATUTE OF. This is the common designation of a very celebrated English statute, (29 Car. II. c. 3,) passed in 1677, and which has been adopted, in a more or less modified form, in nearly all of the J United States. Its chief characteristic is the L Constructive fraud is also called "fraud in provision that no suit or action shall be main- law." Actual or positive fraud includes cases of the intentional and successful employment of any cun- ning, deception, or artifice, used to circumvent, cheat, or deceive another. 1 Story, Eq. Jur. § 186. Actual fraud or fraud in fact consists in the in- tained on certain classes of contracts or en- gagements unless there shall be a note or memorandum thereof in writing signed by the party to be charged or by his authorized agent. Its object was to close the door to

FRAUDAREmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

Lat. [from fraus, q. v.] In the civil law. To deceive, cheat or impose upon; to defraud. Nemo videtur fraudare eos qui sciunt et consentiunt. No one seems [is supposed] to deceive those who know and consent. Dig. 50. 17. 145. [187.] Where a party has full knowledge of facts, and consents to what another does, he is not considered to have been deceived by him.

FRAUDAREmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

In Civil Law. Το cheat; defraud; deceive. FRAUDS, STATUTE OF. The name commonly given to the statute 29 Car. II. c. 8. entitled "An Act for the Prevention of Frauds and Perjuries." The multifarious provisions of this cele- brated statute appear to be distributed under the following heads. 1. The crea- tion and transfer of estates in land, both legal and equitable, such as at common law could be effected by parol, i. e. without deed. 2. Certain cases of contracts which at common law could be validly made by oral agreement. 3. Additional solemnities in cases of wills. 4. New liabilities im- posed in respect of real estate held in trust. 5. The disposition of estates pur auter vie. 6. The entry and effect of judgments and executions. The first and second heads, however, comprise all that in the common professional use of the term is meant by the Statute of Frauds. And they present this important feature, characterizing and distinguishing all the minor provisions which they both contain, i. e. that whereas prior to their enactment the law recognized only two great classes of contracts, conveyances, etc.,-those which were by deed and those which were by parol, including under the latter term alike what was written and what was oral, -these provisions introduced into the law a distinction between written parol and oral parol transactions, and rendered a writing necessary for the valid performance of the matters to which they relate. Those mat- ters are the following:-conveyances, leases, and surrenders of interests in lands; declarations of trusts of interest in lands; special promises by executors or adminis- trators to answer damagesout of their own estate; special promises to answer for the debt, default, or miscarriage of another; agreements made upon consideration of marriage; contracts for the sale of lands, tenements, or hereditaments, or any in- terest in or concerning them; agreements not to be performed within the space of one year from the making thereof; con- tracts for the sale of goods, wares, and merchandise for the price of ten pounds sterling or upwards. All these matters

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