Definition
As a verb, to frequent means to visit or resort to a place often or habitually. In legal usage, the term appears most commonly in criminal statutes and ordinances addressing vagrancy, loitering, disorderly conduct, and similar offenses that prohibit persons from habitually visiting or resorting to particular locations — gambling houses, brothels, unlicensed establishments, or public places under suspicious circumstances.
The legal weight of the word lies in its requirement of repetition and habit. A single visit or a single passage through a location does not constitute frequenting that place. The conduct must suggest a pattern, not an isolated act.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Done or occurring often; common. Occurring at short intervals.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Often to be met with; happening at short intervals; often repeated or occurring. Also: addicted to any course of conduct; inclined to indulge in any practice; habitual; persistent.
The legal term tracks the older English sense of habitual practice rather than mere recurrence. Where ordinary modern usage treats "frequent" as a simple adjective meaning common or regular, legal usage — particularly in criminal statutes — demands a behavioral pattern tied to a specific location and implying purpose. The difference matters: a person who passes a corner twice daily may do so frequently in the common sense, but does not legally "frequent" that corner unless habit and purpose can be shown.
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Common Confusion
FREQUENT vs. FOUND: Bouvier draws a pointed distinction between a person who "frequents" a place and a person who is "found" in a place. To be found in a building or enclosed ground carries with it a necessary inference of unlawful purpose — the single instance is enough, and the circumstances supply the intent. To frequent a place requires repeated resort but does not carry the same automatic inference of unlawful purpose; the pattern of behavior, rather than the single occasion, is the gravamen. Researchers working with vagrancy statutes, anti-trespass ordinances, or nuisance law should be alert to which word the drafters chose, as the evidentiary burden differs substantially.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term will almost always find it embedded in criminal or quasi-criminal statutory language from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — vagrancy acts, disorderly persons statutes, municipal ordinances, and licensing regulations. The word was a legislative tool for targeting habitual association with disfavored places or activities when direct proof of criminal conduct was unavailable.
Several research traps apply:
First, frequency alone is never enough. Sources as early as Bouvier confirm that a single visit cannot satisfy the standard. When reading case law that turns on this word, look carefully at how courts quantified or characterized repetition — the threshold varied and was rarely defined by statute with precision.
Second, the term carries implicit purposive content in many statutes. Frequenting an unlicensed establishment or a house of ill repute was often drafted to require only that the defendant habitually appeared there, but courts frequently read in a requirement that the defendant knew the character of the place. Researchers should not assume the statutory text tells the whole story.
Third, modern researchers consulting digitized historical sources may find that "frequent" as an adjective and "frequent" as a verb are not always cleanly distinguished in index headings or search results. Filtering for the verbal and nominal forms ("frequenting," "frequenter") will return more useful results in statute and case databases than searching on the adjective alone.
Fourth, the constitutional history of vagrancy and loitering laws — many of which relied on this term — is directly relevant. The Supreme Court's treatment of such statutes in the mid-to-late twentieth century substantially narrowed or invalidated many frequenting offenses on vagueness and due process grounds. Statutory language that appeared in nineteenth-century codes may have been repealed, rewritten, or declared unconstitutional without replacement. Researchers should verify whether a historical frequenting statute remains operative in any given jurisdiction before treating it as current law.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier is the primary historical legal source available and is reliable as far as it goes. It correctly identifies the core requirements — habituality and repetition — and draws the useful distinction between frequenting and being found. The partial Indiana citation (109 Ind. 175) supports the proposition that a single visit is insufficient, which is consistent with the general common law treatment of the term across jurisdictions.
Webster's 1913 adds useful context by preserving the now-obsolescent English sense of "frequent" as meaning personally addicted to or inclined toward a course of conduct. This sense, which has largely disappeared from modern common usage, is the sense that animated nineteenth-century vagrancy drafting: the "frequenter" of a gambling house was understood to be someone habituated to that environment, not merely someone who happened to pass by.
What historical dictionaries largely omit is the constitutional dimension. The frequenting offense was a mainstay of vagrancy law that survived largely unexamined until the latter half of the twentieth century. Legal dictionaries of the Bouvier era treat the term descriptively without flagging the due process and equal protection vulnerabilities that later jurisprudence exposed.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term appears in statutes across American jurisdictions but without uniform definition. Some states codified explicit repetition requirements; others left the threshold to judicial construction. Researchers working with a specific state's historical criminal code should consult that state's own case law rather than relying on cross-jurisdictional general statements about what "frequenting" requires.
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