INTENDMENT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

INTENDMENTAuthored

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Definition

Intendment is a term of legal interpretation referring to the true meaning, correct understanding, or reasonable implication of a law, legal instrument, or legal act — as the law itself understands it, rather than as a party may prefer it. It operates as a term of construction: when a document, statute, or transaction is ambiguous or silent on a point, courts look to the intendment to fill the gap by inferring what the law or instrument logically and necessarily means.

The term carries two related but distinct senses in legal usage:

1. Intendment of the law: A presumption supplied by law itself, rather than by direct expression. In the older books, this was treated as equivalent to a presumption of law (præsumptio juris), sometimes irrebuttable. The law "intends" certain consequences to follow from certain acts or instruments without requiring explicit statement. This usage appears frequently in early common law pleading and property contexts.

2. Intendment of an instrument or statute: The true purpose or correct policy underlying a legal document or enactment — what it was designed to accomplish, read in good faith and according to its natural operation, not strained toward any party's advantage.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The sense in which the legal system interprets something, especially the intention of legislation."

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The true meaning, understanding, or intention of a law, or of any legal instrument." Webster's also records an older, now-obsolete common sense: "Intention; design; purpose" — as in "the intendment of God and nature" (Jeremy Taylor).

The gap between common and legal meaning here is subtle but significant. In ordinary usage, "intendment" is practically extinct — most modern speakers would reach for "intention," "meaning," or "purpose" instead. In legal usage, however, intendment carries a more precise technical charge: it refers not merely to what a party subjectively intended, but to what the law objectively supplies or implies. The legal concept is less about mental state and more about the interpretive operation of law itself.

Common Confusion

Intendment is frequently run together with intent and intention, but the terms are not interchangeable. Intent and intention focus on the subjective purpose of a person — a party to a contract, a testator, a criminal defendant. Intendment focuses on the objective legal meaning of an instrument or rule, understood from the law's perspective rather than any individual's. The "intendment of the law" is what the law presumes or implies; the "intent of the parties" is what the parties actually meant to accomplish. Research in older pleading materials and equity cases requires careful attention to which sense is in play — conflation of the two has produced genuine interpretive errors in opinions that borrowed the vocabulary loosely.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century sources will encounter intendment frequently in pleading treatises, equity opinions, and early property cases, where it appears as a near-synonym for legal presumption. The critical trap is treating these uses as identical to modern purposivist interpretation. In the older books, "intendment of the law" was often closer to an irrebuttable legal rule than to a flexible interpretive inference — it told courts what result must follow, not merely what result was likely intended.

In statutory construction materials, intendment bridges older natural-meaning canons and later purposivist analysis. Courts invoking the "true intendment" of a statute were often doing interpretive work that today would be described in terms of legislative purpose or the spirit of the law. Researchers tracking the history of interpretive methodology should flag intendment as an early marker of purpose-based reasoning, without assuming it maps cleanly onto modern purposivism.

In contract law, intendment appears most consequentially in disputes over third-party rights and in construing conditions and limitations in instruments. Courts asking whether a party was an "intended" beneficiary of a contract are working in territory closely related to the old intendment doctrine — the law implying from the instrument itself, not just from the parties' statements, who was meant to benefit. The encyclopedia entry on intended versus incidental beneficiaries is directly relevant to this application.

Because the term has largely dropped from active American legal vocabulary, its absence from modern indices makes corpus searches difficult. Researchers should search historical sources under intendment, common intendment, and true intendment as independent strings, and should expect the term to concentrate in equity, pleading, and property contexts rather than in criminal or procedural materials.

Historical Dictionary Support

The three source dictionaries converge on the core meaning — understanding, true meaning, correct legal interpretation — but with instructive differences in emphasis.

Burrill offers the most minimal and most etymologically grounded entry: "understanding; judgment; intention," tracing the term to the Law French entendment and Latin intellectus. This reflects the term's deep roots in common law pleading, where it functioned as a near-technical term for the legal sense borne by an instrument or rule.

Rapalje and Lawrence provide the most legally precise formulation. Their gloss — "common intendment" as equivalent to præsumptio juris et de jure — is significant: it ties intendment not merely to interpretation but to conclusive legal presumption. This is stronger than a mere inference; it is what the law treats as established without proof or rebuttal. Researchers should note that this sense does not survive intact in modern usage, and historical opinions using this language may be asserting something closer to a rule of law than to interpretive discretion.

Anderson occupies the middle ground: "the correct understanding or intention of the law; the true meaning or correct policy of a law." This framing anticipates modern purposivism more closely than the others and is the version most compatible with twentieth-century statutory interpretation vocabulary.

All three sources are silent on intendment's application to private instruments such as contracts and deeds, despite substantial use in that context. Researchers should not take that silence as limiting authority.

Jurisdictional Note

Intendment was a term of general common law usage and was not jurisdiction-specific in origin. American courts historically borrowed it freely from English sources. Its practical significance today is greatest in jurisdictions that still apply older common law pleading principles or that frequently construe antique instruments — trust documents, deeds, and testamentary materials — where the vocabulary of the original instrument may carry forward traditional usage.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia — Third-Party Beneficiaries: Intended vs. Incidental Beneficiaries (contracts_97): The intended/incidental distinction in modern third-party beneficiary doctrine is the direct descendant of the intendment analysis courts historically applied to determine whether an instrument's legal operation extended to non-parties.

INTENDMENTmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

- " Intendment of the law," in the old books, signifies a presumption, and "common intendment" signifies a rule of law, or præsumptio juris et de jure. Co. Litt. 78b. See PRESUMPTION. INTENT.-Intention (q. v.) INTENT, (a material part of a crime). 2 Mass. 131. (distinguished from "motive"). 7 Blatchf. (U. S.) 277. (synonymous with "purpose"). 9 East 495. (in a statute). 40 Md. 414. INTENT AND PURPOSE, (in a will). 2 Dyer 163 a. INTENT TO DEFRAUD, (conveyance of land with, void). 4 Wheat. (U. S.) 466. (may be presumed). 18 Wend. (N.. Y.) 375. INTENT TO SELL, (in act respecting slaves). Penn. (N. J.) 413. INTENTIO.-A count. - Bract. An intention. Intentio cæca mala (2 Buls. 179): A hidden intention is bad.

INTENDMENTmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

The correct understanding or intention of the law; the true meaning or correct policy of a law. INTENT; INTENTION. Design; determination; purpose. "Intent" implies purpose only - refers to the quality of the mind with which an act is done. "Attempt" (q. v.) implies an effort to carry intent into execution.7 Criminal intent. Evil, malicious will expressed in a criminal act. While crime proceeds from a criminal mind, ignorance of the law is not a defense. General intent. A purpose to do something in general: as 1, to benefit a class of persons or objects by a charitable devise; 2, to violate law. Opposed, 1, particular intent: an intent, expressed in a will, which cannot be given effect, - see CY PRES; and, 2, specific intent: applied to an act done with a particular design. When an act, in general terms, is indictable, a criminal intent need not be shown, unless, from the language or effect of the law, a purpose to require the existence of such intent can be discovered. To introduce into the law the requisite of a guilty mind it must appear that such was the intent of the law-maker.1 Neglect to discharge a duty, or indifference to consequences, is, in cases, equivalent to a specific criminal intent.2 "Act" and "intention," in the phrase "die by his own act or intention," mean the same as "act" alone, for act implies intention. 3 A criminal intent and a criminal act make a crime. But here a "specific intent" and a "criminal intent" are not to be confounded: they have nothing in common except as mental operations. The former determines the object toward which the act shall be directed; the latter that the act so directed shall be done. The former, as part of the criminal act, must be alleged and proved as any other portion of the act; the latter is neither alleged nor proved, but inferred from the commission of the act. Thus, a criminal act presumes criminal intent, though the accused was intoxicated; but where the existence of a specific intent is necessary to the act, a degree of drunkenness incompatible with the formation of that intent negatives the act and disproves the crime. See further CRIME; INDICTMENT; MALICE; PREMEDITATE. Intention is judged of with reference to voluntary action. When guilty knowledge is an ingredient of an ofCommon intent. The ordinary meaning fense, evidence may be given of the commission of of words. 1 County of Allegheny v. Gibson, 90 Pa. 417 (1879): Worcester's Dict. 2 Ortwein v. Commonwealth, 76 Pa. 421 (1874); Bennett v. State, 57 Wis. 86 (1883). 3 Tatum v. State, 63 Ala. 152 (1879), Stone, J. Brockway v. Mutual Benefit Life Ins. Co., 9 F. R. 253 (1881). See Knickerbocker Life Ins. Co. v. Foley, 105 U. S. 354 (1881); 122 id. 512; Union Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Reif, 36 Ohio St. 599 (1881); 62 Cal. 178; 31 Iowa, 222; 70 N. Y. 605; 9 R. I. 346; 1 F. & F. 735. other acts of a like character where they are necessarily connected in time or place or as furnishing a clue to the motive. See further GUILTY. Intention may be proved inductively by collateral facts; as, in trespass, slander, libel, fraud, adultery, questions of good faith, of prudence, etc." 1 Halsted v. State, 41 N. J. L. 552, 589-91 (1879), cases, Beasley, C. J. See also United States v. Bayaud, 16 F. R. 383 (1883). 2 United States v. Thomson, 12 F. R. 245 (1882). 3 Chapman v. Republic Ins. Co., 6 Biss. 240 (1874). See 3 Greenl. Ev. §§ 13-19; 1 Bish. Cr. L. §§ 488-93; Northwestern Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Muskegon Bank, Broom, Com. 876, 887-88; 2 Steph. Hist. Cr. Law Eng. 122 U. S. 506 (1887), Miller, J. Ætna Life Ins. Co. v. Davey, 123 U. S. 743-44 (1887); N. W. Life Ins. Co. v. Muskegon Bank, 122 id. 505 (1887), distinguished. Prince v. State, 35 Ala. 369 (1860), cases. 110-13; Commonwealth v. Hersey, 2 Allen, 179-81 (1861), cases. 5 Re Bininger, 7 Blatch. 267 (1870). People v. Gibbs, 93 N. Y. 473 (1883); 58 id. 555. 1 Whart. Ev. §§ 31-37, cases.

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Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

[L. Fr. entendment; L. Lat. intellectus.] Understanding; judgment; intention.

INTENDMENTn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

Charge; oversight. [Obs.] Ford. Intention; design; purpose. The intendment of God and nature. Jer. Taylor. The true meaning, understanding, or intention of a law, or of any legal instrument.

intendmentnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

the sense in which the legal system interprets something, especially the intention of legislation

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