Definition
To imparl is to obtain leave of court to delay pleading in order to attempt an amicable settlement of a dispute. In historical common-law practice, a party who imparled was granted an imparlance — a continuance or adjournment of the proceedings — during which the parties could confer and potentially resolve the matter without further litigation. The term describes the act; the period of delay itself is called an imparlance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To hold discourse; to parley. Also, to have time before pleading; to obtain a delay for mutual adjustment.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To hold discourse; to parley. Also, specifically legal: to have time before pleading; to have delay for mutual adjustment.
Editorial note: Both Wiktionary and Webster's 1913 carry the legal sense alongside the general sense of "parley," which reflects how thoroughly the term fell out of non-legal use. The general meaning — conferring or holding discourse — is the root of the legal concept, but in legal sources the word has always carried the specific technical meaning of a court-sanctioned procedural delay, not merely conversation. A reader encountering "imparl" in a historical text should not assume informal negotiation; the term signals a formal procedural step within litigation.
Why It Matters in Research
Imparl is an obsolete procedural term found almost exclusively in pre-modern common-law sources. Researchers will encounter it in English and early American pleading materials from roughly the thirteenth through the nineteenth centuries, after which procedural reforms — particularly the abolition of common-law forms of action and the introduction of code pleading in the United States and the Judicature Acts in England — rendered the imparlance obsolete as a formal procedure.
The key research trap is treating "imparl" as synonymous with any modern continuance or settlement conference. The imparlance had specific procedural consequences: a party who imparled generally admitted the court's jurisdiction and may have waived certain defenses, a technical effect that no modern continuance carries. When reading historical pleadings or treatise discussions and encountering this term, the researcher must reconstruct which type of imparlance was involved (see Recognized Forms/Subtypes under IMPARLANCE) because different varieties carried different legal consequences.
In the Law Mind corpus, imparl and its noun form imparlance are most likely to appear in treatises on common-law pleading (Chitty, Stephen, Gould), in early American court records prior to code pleading adoption in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and in English Year Books and their digests. The term is essentially absent from twentieth-century sources except in historical or comparative discussions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) gives identical, terse definitions: "to have license to settle a litigation amicably; to obtain delay for adjustment." This formulation is accurate but compressed. It captures the two functional purposes — amicable settlement and procedural delay — without distinguishing them as closely related but conceptually separate rationales. The settlement purpose is the stated justification; the delay is the procedural mechanism.
Webster's 1913 is notably useful here because it explicitly cites Blackstone, anchoring the legal sense of the term in a recognized authority and confirming the term's period of active use. Neither edition of Black's provides this historical grounding.
What all historical dictionary sources omit is the consequence dimension: the pleading rules that attached to the act of imparling, particularly the effect on jurisdictional objections. Researchers should not rely on dictionary definitions alone when the legal consequences of an imparlance are at issue in historical materials; treatises on common-law pleading provide the necessary procedural detail.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Imparlance; Common-Law Pleading; Forms of Action.