Definition
In historical legal usage, a nimmer is a thief or pilferer — specifically, a petty thief who takes items by stealth or sleight of hand rather than by force. The term does not appear in modern statutory or common law and is encountered today almost exclusively in archaic legal texts, glossaries of criminal terminology, and historical sources dealing with vagrancy, petty larceny, and related offenses.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A surname of German origin. No general English meaning in current use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A thief." Marked as obsolete.
The legal and common meanings here converge rather than diverge — both sources agree on "thief" — but the relevant gap is temporal, not semantic. The term was in active circulation as a descriptive label in English criminal law and legal glossaries of earlier centuries, while modern readers encountering it as a surname (most prominently that of copyright scholar Melville Nimmer) have no frame of reference for its criminal-law history. Researchers who encounter "nimmer" in old statutes, indictments, or legal dictionaries should not confuse the archaic legal term with the contemporary surname.
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Common Confusion
Two entirely distinct uses of this word can create confusion in a legal research context:
1. Nimmer as archaic criminal label. In pre-modern English law, a nimmer was a petty thief. This usage is now obsolete and survives only in historical legal dictionaries.
2. Nimmer as a leading copyright treatise. Melville B. Nimmer's treatise Nimmer on Copyright, continued after his death by David Nimmer, is one of the most frequently cited secondary authorities in American intellectual property law. When modern practitioners or courts cite "Nimmer," they invariably mean the treatise, not the archaic criminal term. The two uses share only a word; they have no substantive connection.
Researchers working in historical criminal law sources should not be confused by the archaic usage into thinking it has bearing on copyright doctrine, and vice versa.
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Why It Matters in Research
The archaic criminal usage matters in a narrow but specific research context: scholars working in historical English criminal law, vagrancy law, or glossaries of thieves' cant will encounter this term in period sources and need to recognize it as a descriptor for a petty thief, roughly synonymous with pilferer or filcher. It does not carry technical legal weight distinguishing it formally from other theft categories in the way that, for example, burglary or larceny do.
The more practically significant research issue is disambiguation. Law Mind corpus researchers should be aware that in any modern legal source, "Nimmer" almost certainly refers to the copyright treatise. Melville Nimmer was a professor at UCLA School of Law whose treatise, first published in 1963, became the foundational reference work in American copyright law. Citations to "Nimmer on Copyright" appear across federal case law, law review literature, and legislative history surrounding the Copyright Act of 1976. Researchers following citation trails in intellectual property materials should treat "Nimmer" as a treatise citation, not a term of art.
For historical criminal law research, the Black's Law Dictionary entries (both editions) provide the only dictionary-level support for this term. No statute or modern code uses it. Its presence in a document is a reliable marker of either archaic English legal usage or deliberate antiquarianism.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's Law Dictionary and Black's Law Dictionary (2nd ed.) define nimmer identically: "A thief; a pilferer." Neither edition provides elaboration, statutory context, or cross-references, indicating the editors treated it as a term of historical completeness rather than active legal utility. Webster's 1913 corroborates the definition and explicitly marks the term obsolete, suggesting it had already fallen out of practical use by the early twentieth century.
The brevity of all sources on this term is itself informative: it was never a term of art with formal legal elements or doctrinal significance. It belonged to descriptive criminal vocabulary rather than to the technical vocabulary of pleading or statutory interpretation.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term is rooted in English legal usage and has no recognized meaning in any modern American, Commonwealth, or civil law jurisdiction. It does not appear in current statutory codes.
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