GATE

8 definitions found across Law Mind sources

GATEAuthored
The Law Mind • 858 words
Definition
In English property law, a gate is a right in land entitling the holder to use another's land for the grazing of a specified number of cattle. It is a corporeal interest — meaning it confers actual use of the land itself, not merely a right exercisable over another's ownership — and is accordingly distinguished from a mere right of common of pasture, which is an incorporeal hereditament. The gate right quantifies the number of animals that may graze, functioning as a fixed unit of grazing entitlement attached to or held independently of a dominant tenement. The term appears in English law primarily in its regional variants: beast-gate (Suffolk) and cattlegate (Yorkshire). The underlying concept is the same across usages — a measured right of passage and grazing for cattle over defined ground.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A doorlike structure, movable barrier, or passageway in a fence or wall; also an airport embarkation point, a ticket-revenue figure, or a logical switching pathway in computing. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A large door or passageway in the wall of a city, an enclosed field, or a grand edifice; the movable framework that closes or opens such a passage; figuratively, a means of entrance or exit. The legal meaning has essentially no overlap with modern common usage. Where ordinary speakers understand a gate as a physical barrier or door, the legal term denotes an intangible property right — a quantified entitlement to graze cattle on another's land. A researcher encountering "gate" in an English conveyancing document, estate record, or manorial survey should not interpret it as a reference to any physical structure.
Common Confusion
Gate is frequently conflated with common of pasture, but the distinction matters in historical research. Common of pasture is an incorporeal hereditament — a right appurtenant or in gross that exists as a claim upon another's land without conferring physical possession of any part of it. A gate, by contrast, was treated in English law as a corporeal interest in the land itself, closer in character to a profit à prendre. This distinction affected how the right was conveyed, recorded, and litigated. Treating a gate as equivalent to a mere grazing license or a right of common will produce errors in reading old title chains and enclosure awards.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English manorial records, enclosure awards, tithe apportionments, or conveyancing documents from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries will encounter gate rights as quantified units — "three gates," "a half-gate" — appended to estate descriptions or scheduled separately as distinct property interests. Because enclosure movements frequently extinguished or commuted gate rights, enclosure awards are a primary source for tracing their termination or conversion into freehold or allotment rights. The regional vocabulary is a practical trap. Beast-gate and cattlegate denote the same legal interest under different names, and a researcher unfamiliar with the Suffolk or Yorkshire terminology may fail to recognize the legal concept when scanning documents. Indexes and calendars compiled by non-lawyers may not cross-reference these terms reliably. Because gate is a corporeal interest rather than an incorporeal one, it should appear differently in deed recitals than rights of common — look for it in the parcels clause rather than in the habendum or in schedules of appurtenant rights. Its absence from the parcels clause of a conveyance that you expect to include it warrants further investigation into whether it was separately conveyed, extinguished by enclosure, or simply omitted. Gate rights do not appear in American legal sources in this technical sense. Researchers working in U.S. property law or applying American legal dictionaries will find no domestic analog; the concept is specific to English common law and its derivative jurisdictions where manorial tenure persisted long enough to generate documentary records.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the foundational definition: a right in land for the use of cattle, literally a "going" of cattle over ground, classified as a corporeal interest in land and distinguished from common of pasture. Burrill cites Chitty's General Practice to support the corporeal characterization, which is the jurisprudentially significant element. Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not appear to contain a substantive entry for gate in its property-law sense; the excerpt provided in the source material concerns præscriptio in Roman law and is unrelated. Neither dictionary addresses gate rights in the context of enclosure, which is where most researchers will actually encounter them. The historical dictionaries are adequate for establishing the basic classification but offer no guidance on how gate rights were quantified, transferred, or extinguished — gaps that require recourse to manorial law treatises and enclosure scholarship rather than legal dictionaries alone.
Jurisdictional Note
Gate in its technical property-law sense is a term of English law with no established American equivalent. It will not appear in U.S. statutes, American case reporters, or domestic legal dictionaries in this meaning. Research into this concept is bounded to England and jurisdictions that inherited English manorial land-law traditions.
Related Terms
Beast-gate Cattlegate Common of pasture Profit à prendre Corporeal hereditament Incorporeal hereditament Right of common Enclosure Manorial tenure Appurtenant
GATEmain
Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890
2. In the Roman law, præscriptio was an exception written in front of the plaintiff's pleading. It became applied exclusively to the præscriptio longi temporis, etc., or the prescription founded on length of possession, which see, below. 3. "When a man can show no other title to what he claims than that he and those under whom he claims have immemorially used to enjoy it." 4 Whence prescriptible, imprescriptible, prescriptive. All prescription must be either in a man and his ancestors, or in a man and those whose estate he has, which last is called prescribing in a que estate (quorum statum). Nothing but incorporeal hereditaments can be claimed by prescription; as, a right of way, or a common. No prescription can give title to lands of which more certain evidence may be had; and it must always be laid in him that is tenant of the fee: since usage beyond time of memory cannot be predicated of any lesser estate. Nor, again, can it be for a thing which cannot be raised by grant: for the law allows prescription only in supply of the loss of agrant, and, therefore, every prescription presupposes a grant to have existed.4 Title by prescription is a right which a possessor of land acquires by reason of his adverse possession during a period of time fixed by law, and where it does not originate in fraud, and is under a claim of right.5 Prescription is a legal fiction to quiet ancient possession. It rests upon the presumption that there was a grant which by lapse of time (usually twenty years) has become lost. The presumption is rebuttable." The doctrine is broader than that of a statute of limitations, although based upon analogous principles of repose to society. "What the primary owner has lost by his laches, 1 Exline v. Smith, 5 Cal. 112 (1885). Peterman v. Huling, 31 Pa. 436 (1858), Strong, J. Sandar's Justinian, 47, 125; Maine, Anc. Law, 275. 42 Bl. Com. 263-66. • Burdell v. Blain, 66 Ga. 170 (1880), Crawford, J. • Folsom v. Freeborn, 13 R. I. 205-7 (1881), cases. Brookline v. Mackintosh, 133 Mass. 226 (1882); Thomas v. England, 71 Cal. 458 (1886). • Bozeman v. Bozeman, 82 Ala. 391 (1886). the other party has gained by continued possession, without question of his right." This is the foundation of the doctrine, which, in the English law, is mainly applied to incorporeal hereditaments, but which in the Roman law, and the codes founded on it, is applied to property of all kinds. See USE, 2, User. 4. To fill a druggist's prescription is to furnish and combine the requisite materials in due proportion as directed.2 When a druggist, in good faith, recommends a prescription as that of another person, and, at the request of his customer, fills it, charging only for the drugs and for compounding them, he is not responsible for injury that may result from the use of the alleged remedy. See DRUGGIST.
GATEmain
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867
In English law. A right in land for the use of cattle.* Literally, a going (of cattle over ground.) The term beast-gate (q. v.) is used in Suffolk, and cattlegate (q. v.) in Yorkshire. It is a corporeal interest in land, distinguishable from the mere right of common of pasture. 1 Chitt. Gen. Pr. 182.
GATEn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
A large door or passageway in the wall of a city, of an inclosed field or place, or of a grand edifice, etc.; also, the movable structure of timber, metal, etc., by which the passage can be closed. An opening for passage in any inclosing wall, fence, or barrier; or the suspended framework which closes or opens a passage. Also, figuratively, a means or way of entrance or of exit. Knowest thou the way to Dover Both stile and gate, horse way and footpath. Shak. Opening a gate for a long war. Knolles. A door, valve, or other device, for stopping the passage of water through a dam, lock, pipe, etc. The places which command the entrances or access; hence, place of vantage; power; might. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Matt. xvi. 18. In a lock tumbler, the opening for the stump of the bolt to pass through or into. The channel or opening through which metal is poured into the mold; the ingate. The waste piece of metal cast in the opening; a sprue or sullage piece. [Written also geat and git.] Gate chamber, a recess in the side wall of a canal lock, which receives the opened gate. -- Gate channel. See Gate, 5. -- Gate hook, the hook-formed piece of a gate hinge. -- Gate money, entrance money for admission to an inclosure. -- Gate tender, one in charge of a gate, as at a railroad crossing. -- Gate valva, a stop valve for a pipe, having a sliding gate which affords a straight passageway when open. -- Gate vein (Anat.), the portal vein. -- To break gates (Eng. Univ.), to enter a college inclosure after the hour to which a student has been restricted. -- To stand in the gate, or gates, to occupy places or advantage, power, or defense.
GATEv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To supply with a gate.
GATEn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
A way; a path; a road; a street (as in Highgate). [O. Eng. & Scot.] I was going to be an honest man; but the devil has this very day flung first a lawyer, and then a woman, in my gate. Sir W. Scott. Manner; gait. [O. Eng. & Scot.]
gatenoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
A doorlike structure outside a house. | A doorway, opening, or passage in a fence or wall. | A movable barrier. | A passageway (as in an air terminal) where passengers can embark or disembark. | A location which serves as a conduit for transport, migration, or trade. | The amount of money made by selling tickets to a concert or a sports event. | A logical pathway made up of switches which turn on or off. Examples are and, or, nand, etc. | The controlling terminal of a field effect transistor (FET). | In a lock tumbler, the opening for the stump of the bolt to pass through or into. | The channel or opening through which metal is poured into the mould; the ingate; tedge. | The waste piece of metal cast in the opening; a sprue or sullage piece. Also written geat and git. | The gap between a batsman's bat and pad. | A mechanism, in a film camera and projector, that holds each frame momentarily stationary behind the aperture. | A line that separates particle type-clusters on two-dimensional dot plots. | A tally mark consisting of four vertical bars crossed by a diagonal, representing a count of five. | An individual theme park as part of a larger resort complex with multiple parks. | A place where drugs are illegally sold. | A man; a male person. | A tunnel serving the coal face.
gatenoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
A way, path. | A journey. | A street; now used especially as a combining form to make the name of a street e.g. "Briggate" (a common street name in the north of England meaning "Bridge Street") or Kirkgate meaning "Church Street". | Manner; gait.

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