Definition
Without body or material substance; existing only in legal contemplation rather than in physical form. In law, incorporeal describes rights, interests, and properties that have no tangible existence — they cannot be touched, seen, or physically possessed, yet they are fully recognized and enforceable by the legal system. The term functions primarily as a classificatory adjective applied to property and rights, distinguishing intangible legal interests from physical things.
The concept anchors two durable legal categories:
1. Incorporeal hereditaments: Incorporeal rights that run with or grow out of real property and are inheritable — such as easements, profits à prendre, rents, and advowsons. These are interests in land but are not land itself; they attach to, burden, or benefit physical property without being physical property.
2. Incorporeal chattels: Incorporeal rights growing out of or incident to personal property — patent rights and copyrights being the classic examples. The holder owns a legal right, not a physical thing.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Something that is incorporeal — that is, lacking a physical body or material form. Primarily used in philosophical, theological, or fantastical contexts to describe entities like spirits or souls.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not corporeal; not having a material body or form; not consisting of matter; immaterial. Webster's explicitly bridges the gap, adding the legal sense: "Existing only in contemplation of law; not capable of actual visible seizin or possession."
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow in substance but significant in application. In ordinary English, incorporeal describes metaphysical or spiritual absence of body. In law, it describes the structural character of a right or property interest — the question is not whether something supernatural is involved, but whether the interest admits of physical possession. An easement is incorporeal not because it is mysterious, but because the law cannot deliver it into your hand.
Common Confusion
Incorporeal is frequently paired with, and occasionally confused with, intangible in modern legal and commercial usage. The terms overlap but are not identical. Intangible is the preferred word in modern tax, accounting, and intellectual property law (intangible assets, intangible property). Incorporeal is the classical common law term with a more specific structural meaning — it locates a right within property doctrine and historically determined whether livery of seisin or physical delivery was required for transfer. In historical sources, using intangible as a synonym for incorporeal will not always be safe; the older cases and treatises use incorporeal in ways that carry doctrinal weight the modern term does not.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in property law must understand incorporeal to navigate the foundational classification system of English and American real property doctrine. The distinction between corporeal and incorporeal hereditaments governed how property was conveyed at common law: corporeal hereditaments passed by livery of seisin (physical delivery of possession), while incorporeal hereditaments — having no physical existence — passed by grant (deed). This difference appears throughout early equity and common law decisions and in treatise literature through the nineteenth century.
In historical sources, the category of incorporeal hereditaments is broader than modern readers expect. It includes not just easements but also tithes, franchises, offices, dignities, and advowsons — interests that have largely disappeared from American practice but populate English legal history extensively. Researchers reading older English cases or colonial-era American materials will encounter these terms without much explanation; the dictionaries assume knowledge of the underlying taxonomy.
In intellectual property history, the incorporeal chattels category is the conceptual ancestor of modern intangible property. Patent rights and copyrights were classified as incorporeal chattels before the statutory and constitutional frameworks we now rely on were fully developed. Understanding that classification illuminates early arguments about the nature of IP rights.
For constitutional law researchers, note that incorporation (as in incorporation of the Bill of Rights) is etymologically related but doctrinally unconnected to incorporeal. The two uses of the root share Latin origin but describe entirely different legal concepts. Do not allow search results for one to bleed into research on the other.
Historical Dictionary Support
The major historical dictionaries agree on the core meaning with minimal variation. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's converge on the same definition: without body, not of material nature, existing only in legal contemplation. Bouvier's formulation — "not an object of sense, but existing only in contemplation of law" — is the most precise and is the phrasing that appears most frequently in treatise literature.
Anderson's entry simply redirects to corporeal, treating incorporeal as defined by contrast — a reasonable approach given that the term is almost always used oppositionally.
Burrill's entry is skeletal, offering only the Latin origin (incorporalis) without substantive definition. This is less helpful than the other sources.
What the historical dictionaries collectively underserve is the practical doctrinal consequence of the distinction — the conveyancing rules, the different treatment in equity, the implications for adverse possession (incorporeal hereditaments cannot generally be adversely possessed in the same way corporeal ones can). Researchers should not expect the dictionary definitions alone to supply those rules; they require treatise sources such as Blackstone's Commentaries (Book II) or Kent's Commentaries for full development.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia: Incorporation of the Bill of Rights Against the States — for researchers who encounter "incorporation" in constitutional contexts and need to confirm they are working with a distinct doctrine unrelated to incorporeal property.