Definition
INDENT has three distinct legal meanings, reflecting its use across different historical and practical contexts.
1. A post-Revolutionary War certificate. In early American law, an indent was a certificate—more fully called an indented certificate—issued by the United States government at the close of the Revolution to represent the principal or accrued interest of the public debt. These instruments were so named because their edges were cut or notched (indented) to serve as an authentication device, matching a counterpart retained by the issuing authority. The term appears in early federal statutes and was a recognized instrument in the first funding operations of the new republic.
2. An indenture or binding contract. Indent is used, especially in older sources, as a shortened form of indenture—a formal agreement between two or more parties, historically prepared in duplicate on a single sheet that was then cut along an irregular or notched line so that the two parts could later be matched to verify authenticity. In this sense, to indent a person meant to bind them by indenture, most commonly as an apprentice or indentured servant.
3. A commercial or military requisition. In trade and military usage, an indent is a formal written order for goods—a purchase order directed to an agent, supplier, or commissariat specifying the items required.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To indent most commonly means to set text back from a margin, to notch or cut a surface, or to make an impression by pressing.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To notch or cut into points like teeth; to press or stamp an impression into a surface; to bind a person out by contract or indenture.
The gap matters for researchers: the typographical and physical notching senses dominate modern ordinary usage, but the legal senses—certificate, contract, and requisition—are distinct instruments with no typographical connection. A reader encountering "indent" in an early American legal document or statute should not read the word in its modern clerical sense.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Indented certificate: The full form of the post-Revolutionary instrument; the abbreviated form "indent" was in common use but both terms appear in the congressional acts that governed the funding of the debt.
Indenture: The expanded form of the contractual meaning; an indent in this sense is effectively a shortened indenture, though in practice the two terms were sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes distinguished by formality.
Why It Matters in Research
The post-Revolutionary certificate meaning is the most legally precise and historically specific usage, and it is the one most likely to appear in early federal statutes and public finance documents. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus on early American public debt, funding legislation, or Hamilton-era finance will encounter this term in a sense that is entirely obsolete in modern practice. Black's and Burrill both record it, but neither explains the instrument's practical operation in detail; Hamilton's Report on Public Credit (January 9, 1790) is the primary documentary context.
The indenture/apprenticeship sense creates a research trap: sources that use "indent" to mean "bind by indenture" may appear to refer to something narrower or different from a full indenture when in fact they are using a compressed form of the same concept. This is especially common in records concerning apprenticeships, indentured servitude, and colonial labor arrangements.
The commercial requisition meaning is most likely to appear in military records, colonial trade documents, and agency correspondence rather than in court opinions or statutes, and historical legal dictionaries largely ignore it.
Jurisdictional variation is not a significant issue for the legal meanings, but the certificate meaning is specific to United States federal history and has no continuing state-law application.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most developed treatment of the certificate meaning, noting the specific acts of Congress (April 30, 1790 and March 3, 1825) in which the word was used and construed, and crediting Webster's definition. This is the most precise historical source for researchers tracing the term in early federal law.
Black's records the indenture/apprenticeship meaning concisely—"to bind by indentures; to apprentice"—and cross-references Webster's. Black's also contains a fragmentary entry suggesting some connection to indemnity instruments, but this appears to be a scanning or indexing artifact and should not be read as establishing a separate legal meaning. Rapalje & Lawrence's material under this heading is similarly fragmentary and addresses indebtedness rather than indent proper; it adds nothing to the definition.
None of the historical dictionaries address the commercial requisition meaning, which is captured only in general-purpose sources like Webster's and Wiktionary.
Jurisdictional Note
The indented certificate meaning is specific to post-Revolutionary federal public finance and has no modern legal counterpart in any jurisdiction. The indenture meaning appears across common law jurisdictions but is most fully developed in English and early American sources. The commercial requisition meaning is used in British Commonwealth contexts more than in American legal practice.