Definition
A Latin term from the civil law carrying three related but distinct meanings:
1. To show or discover. In its broadest sense, indicare meant to make something known, to disclose, or to bring a fact to light.
2. To fix or tell the price of a thing. In a commercial or transactional context, indicare referred to the act of stating, setting, or declaring the value or price of goods or property.
3. To inform against or accuse. In a procedural context, indicare described the act of laying information against a person — pointing someone out as the subject of an accusation or charge.
All three meanings share a core semantic thread: the act of pointing to or designating something with legal consequence.
Why It Matters in Research
Indicare is a Roman civil law term that rarely appears in modern common law sources. Researchers encountering it will almost certainly be working in one of three contexts: historical civil law materials, treatises drawing on Roman or canon law foundations, or early American legal writing where Latin terminology remained in active use.
The three-meaning structure creates a practical hazard. A passage citing indicare in a commercial law context (fixing a price) may look superficially similar to one using it in a prosecutorial or informational sense (accusing or informing against). Context must govern interpretation. The commercial meaning connects to concepts of valuation and offer; the accusatory meaning connects to early procedural concepts related to informers and denunciations.
Researchers in the Law Mind corpus should be alert to the term appearing in glossaries and treatises as a parent or related form for derived terms such as indicium (indication, evidence, or sign) and index (one who points out or informs). These derived terms are far more common in both civil law and common law sources and carry independent doctrinal weight. The connection between indicare and the law of informers is worth noting for researchers tracing the history of qui tam actions and related enforcement mechanisms that depended on private accusation.
Bouvier stops at two meanings (disclosure and price-fixing), omitting the accusatory sense. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier in a prosecutorial or procedural context will miss that dimension of the term.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core meanings, though with minor variation in emphasis. Black's (both editions) and Burrill track closely, listing all three meanings. Bouvier's entry is the shortest and omits the accusatory sense entirely — a notable gap given that the inform-against meaning has procedural significance.
Burrill is the most useful of the shelf sources here. His entry traces the accusatory sense to the Digest (Dig. 50.16.197), a passage in the title De verborum significatione (On the meaning of words), which provides some grounding for the term's usage in classical Roman legal writing. The citation to Calvinus (Lex. Calv., i.e., Johannes Calvinus's Lexicon Juridicum) appears across multiple entries and was a standard civil law reference tool of the period.
None of the historical dictionaries attempt to trace how indicare functioned procedurally within the Roman accusatorial or inquisitorial systems, or to distinguish it from related terms of accusation. For that depth, researchers must go beyond the dictionary shelf to civil law treatises.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Civil Law; Accusation and Indictment (Historical); Roman Law Procedure