Definition
A Latin term meaning to press upon, to impress, to imprint, or to print. In legal contexts, imprimere appears in historical English and continental law primarily in connection with the act of printing or stamping — physically or symbolically pressing a mark, seal, or text upon a surface. The term is the root of several related legal and documentary concepts, including the formal authorization to print (imprimatur) and the broader regulatory framework governing the printing trade in early modern England.
The term does not carry an independent substantive legal meaning of its own in modern law. It functions chiefly as a root word and historical reference point from which cognate terms — particularly imprimatur — derive their legal significance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Imprimere is not a current English word. It is a Latin infinitive meaning "to press into" or "to imprint," used in modern English primarily in technical, scholarly, or ecclesiastical contexts through its derivatives.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not independently listed. The concept appears through derivatives such as "imprint" (to press or stamp a mark upon something) and "impress" (to apply pressure so as to leave a mark or seal).
The legal significance of imprimere lies almost entirely in its derivative vocabulary. Researchers encountering the term itself in primary sources are typically dealing with Latin passages in statutes, writs, or scholarly commentary — not with a freestanding English legal doctrine.
Common Confusion
IMPRIMERE / IMPRIMATUR / IMPRIMIS: Three distinct terms easily confused in historical sources. Imprimere is the Latin verb (the act of pressing or printing). Imprimatur is the formal grant of permission to print, issued by ecclesiastical or civil authority. Imprimis is an entirely unrelated term of enumeration (meaning "first" or "in the first place") common in wills and statutes. Burrill's entry sequences all three in close proximity, which increases the risk of conflation for researchers scanning quickly.
Why It Matters in Research
Imprimere matters to legal historians and corpus researchers primarily as a gateway term. Its direct appearances in primary sources are rare and largely confined to Latin text in early English statutes and common law treatises. When it does appear, the context is almost always connected to one of three things: the regulation of the printing trade, the use of seals and impressions in documentary formalities, or the ecclesiastical licensing system that gave rise to the imprimatur.
The most practically significant connection is Statute 14 Car. II c. 33 (the Licensing of the Press Act 1662), referenced by Burrill. That statute regulated printing houses and required royal authorization for printed works. Researchers tracing press censorship, copyright prehistory, or publishing regulation in the common law tradition will encounter imprimere and its derivatives as legal terms of art in that statutory context.
A secondary research trap: Bouvier's entry pivots mid-discussion to imprimatur without clearly flagging the transition. Researchers consulting Bouvier for imprimere may inadvertently read the imprimatur definition and conflate the two. Imprimere is the act; imprimatur is the formal grant of permission to perform that act. They are related but not interchangeable.
Burrill's entry is also notable for pulling in imprimis (in the first place) immediately after discussing imprimere and its derivatives. These are phonetically and orthographically similar but entirely unrelated in legal meaning. Old wills and instruments frequently open with imprimis as a term of enumeration, and researchers working with historical testamentary documents should not mistake it for any connection to printing or impression.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries show strong agreement on the core definition — to press upon, to impress, to imprint, or to print — but diverge sharply in how much weight they assign the term.
Black's (both editions) treats imprimere as a brief definitional entry, offering the Latin-to-English translation without elaboration or doctrinal context. This is consistent with Black's general approach to pure Latin root terms.
Burrill goes further, embedding imprimere within a cluster of related terms (imprimerie, imprimis) and connecting it to a specific statutory reference. This makes Burrill the most useful of the four sources for researchers who need to trace the term's operation in historical English law. The citation to Cowell's Interpreter is also notable — Cowell's early seventeenth-century legal dictionary is a primary source for this vocabulary in the common law tradition.
Bouvier, characteristically, reaches toward the broader doctrinal concept by transitioning to imprimatur and situating it within the comparative framework of press censorship. Bouvier's note that "in some countries where the press is liable to censorship, an imprimatur is required" reflects the nineteenth-century American perspective, where such requirements were no longer operative but remained relevant to understanding foreign law and historical English practice.
No source provides a definition that is incorrect, but collectively they leave imprimere undercontextualized. None explicitly situates the term within the history of press regulation or explains its relationship to copyright's prehistory — connections that are essential for modern researchers.