Definition
A Latin and Law Latin verb meaning "to incorporate" — literally, to give a body to, to clothe with a body, or to gather persons or things into a body. In old English law, *incorporare* was used in royal charters, letters patent, and other formal instruments to effect the legal transformation of a group of persons into a single artificial entity capable of acting, holding property, and suing or being sued as one. The term operates as the performative word by which incorporation is accomplished in a founding instrument, functioning similarly to the way operative words like "grant" or "convey" function in deeds.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Incorporare" has no current common English usage; it is a Latin or Law Latin term not used in ordinary modern speech. Its English descendant "incorporate" means to combine, include, or form a legal corporation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's does not carry "incorporare" as an English entry; it is recognized as the Latin root of "incorporate," which Webster's defines as "to form into a body or a society having a legal existence" or "to unite intimately."
The gap worth noting: the English verb "incorporate" has drifted toward general usage — meaning simply to combine or include something within a whole. The Law Latin *incorporare*, as a term of art in historical English legal instruments, carried a precise operative function: it was the word that purported to create the legal personality of a corporation. Whether that single word was legally necessary was itself a contested question, which is why its status as a required term of art was litigated.
Common Confusion
Researchers sometimes treat *incorporare* as though it were merely a Latin synonym for the modern English act of "incorporating" a business. The historical term belongs to an older framework of charter-based incorporation, where specific words in a founding document were thought to have operative legal force. The modern administrative act of incorporation — filing articles with a state agency — has no equivalent dependence on any particular word or formula. Confusion also arises between *incorporare* (the act of creating a corporate body) and *incorporeal* (relating to things without physical existence), which share the root *corpus* but address entirely different legal concepts.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-modern English legal sources — Year Books, Coke's Reports, and early treatises on the law of corporations — and is unlikely to appear in modern statutory or case law except as historical quotation. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus on the history of corporate personality, charter interpretation, or the development of incorporation doctrine will encounter *incorporare* in foundational texts.
The most important research signal attached to this term is the holding in The Case of Sutton's Hospital (10 Co. 30a), cited by Burrill, which established that the word *incorporare* is not legally necessary to create a valid incorporation — other equivalent words will suffice. This ruling is historically significant because it moved English law away from strict verbal formalism in charter drafting and toward an interpretive approach that looks to the evident intent of the granting instrument. Researchers tracing the evolution of corporate law doctrine should treat this case as an anchor point.
Be alert to the fact that historical sources discussing "words of incorporation" often debate whether particular language in a charter was sufficient to create a corporation, and *incorporare* frequently appears as the paradigm case of a sufficient word — against which other words or phrases are measured. When analyzing historical charters or grants in the corpus, the presence or absence of *incorporare* (or its English equivalent) may be directly relevant to whether a court or commentator treated the instrument as creating a true corporation or merely an unincorporated association.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source for this term in the Law Mind corpus, and its entry is brief but precise. Burrill identifies the word as Law Latin, parses its components (*in* + *corpus*), and correctly notes both its general meaning (to give a body to; to gather into a body) and its specific legal function in old English law. The citation to 10 Co. 30a (The Case of Sutton's Hospital) grounds the entry in authoritative precedent.
Burrill's entry does not address the broader doctrinal significance of the Sutton's Hospital holding — namely, that it relaxed the formal requirement for the word itself — limiting its treatment to the definitional level. Researchers should not read Burrill's definition as implying that *incorporare* was ever a mandatory term of art; the cited case says precisely the opposite. No other historical dictionary in the current Law Mind corpus carries this term, which reflects its status as specialized Law Latin rather than a term with common-law English currency.
Jurisdictional Note
This is a term of English legal history with no direct application in any modern jurisdiction's positive law. Its relevance is confined to historical research into English and early American corporate law, where charter-based incorporation under the Crown or state authority required formal founding instruments.