Definition
To intercommon is to exercise a right of common mutually and promiscuously with the inhabitants or tenants of a contiguous township, vill, or manor. In practice, this means that the residents of two adjacent manors or townships have each grazed their cattle on the other's common land — not by formal grant, but by immemorial mutual use. When such mutual use has continued long enough to be established by custom, the practice gives rise to the right known as intercommoning.
The term functions both as a verb (describing the act of grazing cattle promiscuously across adjoining commons) and as the root of the noun intercommoning, which names the established right or custom itself. The right is distinct from an ordinary common of pasture, which is typically appurtenant to a specific tenement and runs in one direction only. Intercommoning is inherently bilateral: both communities feed their cattle on each other's land, and neither holds the right in isolation from the other.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To share with others or participate; especially, to eat at the same table. Also, to graze cattle indiscriminately in the commons of each other, as inhabitants of adjoining townships or manors.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To share with others; to participate; especially, to eat at the same table. (Obs.) Also, to graze cattle promiscuously in the commons of each other, as the inhabitants of adjoining townships, manors, etc.
The general English sense — sharing a meal or table — is entirely absent from the legal meaning. In law, intercommon has only the agrarian sense: mutual grazing on adjacent commons. A researcher encountering the word in a non-legal historical text should not assume the legal right is at issue; the shared-table meaning was in use through at least the early modern period.
Why It Matters in Research
Intercommon is a term of English agrarian land law with almost no modern American legal presence. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in materials relating to English common law, early colonial land arrangements derived from English manorial custom, or historical property disputes involving common lands.
The key research trap is treating intercommoning as simply a variant of a common of pasture appurtenant. The distinction matters: an ordinary common of pasture is appurtenant to a dominant tenement and enforceable as a property right by that tenement's owner; intercommoning rests on immemorial custom between communities and is inherently mutual. Historical sources that discuss one may not adequately explain the other, and conflating them can produce errors in reading early English cases or treatises on common lands.
When working with Blackstone (2 Bl. Comm. 33) — the citation repeated across all five source dictionaries — note that Blackstone treats intercommoning briefly, in the context of distinguishing types of common. Crabb's Real Property (1 Crabb, Real Prop. § 290) provides more extended treatment and is worth consulting when the right's incidents or extinguishment are at issue.
In corpus searches, expect variant spellings (inter-common, intercommoning, inter-commoning) in older materials. The noun form intercommoning is more frequently litigated and discussed than the verb alone.
Historical Dictionary Support
All five source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition, and most reproduce almost verbatim the formulation traceable to Blackstone: enjoyment of common mutually or promiscuously with inhabitants or tenants of a contiguous township, vill, or manor. This uniformity signals that the dictionaries are largely transmitting Blackstone rather than synthesizing independent legal development.
Bouvier adds the most substantive content among the dictionary sources, specifying that the right arises when commons of two adjacent manors join and inhabitants have immemorially fed cattle promiscuously on each other's common. This immemorial-custom basis is important: it explains why intercommoning is not easily created by express grant and why its extinguishment or enclosure raised distinct legal questions from ordinary pasture rights.
Anderson simply cross-references Common, Right — a useful reminder that the term is best understood within the broader framework of common law rights of common rather than in isolation.
None of the historical dictionaries address what happens when intercommoning is disputed, how it is proved, or how enclosure acts affected it. Researchers needing that level of detail must move beyond the dictionaries to Blackstone, Crabb, or English case law directly.
Jurisdictional Note
Intercommoning is a doctrine of English land law. Its direct application in American jurisdictions is negligible; American land tenure did not replicate the manorial structure from which the right arose. Researchers working on early colonial land history in New England, where common field arrangements loosely echoed English practice, may find the concept useful for analogical analysis, but should not assume the technical right transplanted intact.