Definition
Ocorody is an archaic legal term of uncertain application appearing in historical American legal sources. Based on the available record, its precise meaning cannot be reliably reconstructed from surviving dictionary definitions alone. The term appears in Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) in a fragmentary context suggesting a procedural or party-relation concept — the surviving source text references a defendant and an associated party, citing *Lowe v. Bennett*, 27 Misc. Rep. 356, 58 N.Y. Supp. 88 — but the definition itself is not preserved in the available source material.
Researchers should treat this term as effectively obsolete and of specialized historical interest only.
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Why It Matters in Research
The primary research challenge with ocorody is the incomplete survival of its source definition. The Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) entry is fragmentary in the available corpus — what remains is a citation tail and a partial sentence referencing a defendant's relationship to another party, but the definitional language has not been preserved. This is a known hazard with early editions of Black's: entries at the margins of the alphabet or on damaged pages sometimes survive only in truncated form in digitized collections.
Researchers encountering this term in historical legal documents — particularly late 19th or early 20th century New York practice materials — should consult the original print edition of Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., 1910) directly, as well as the New York Miscellaneous Reports for the cited case, *Lowe v. Bennett*, which may supply context sufficient to reconstruct the term's meaning from judicial usage. The New York Supplement citation (58 N.Y. Supp. 88) provides a parallel avenue of access.
Because the surviving fragment references a defendant and an associated or connected party, the term may relate to concepts of joinder, co-party relationships, suretyship, or some procedural status recognized in New York practice of that era. Researchers should cross-reference contemporaneous New York procedural terms and pleading concepts when investigating this possibility.
Do not assume the term carries meaning into modern practice. No current legal usage has been identified.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is the sole source dictionary containing an entry for ocorody in the Law Mind corpus. The surviving text reads only as a sentence fragment: "fendant with such party. Lowe v. Bennett, 27 Misc. Rep. 356, 58 N. Y. Supp. 88." This is plainly the tail end of a definition — the word "fendant" is almost certainly the conclusion of "defendant" — but the opening of the entry, which would have supplied the actual definition, is absent from the available source.
No other historical legal dictionaries in the corpus — including Bouvier's Law Dictionary or Abbott's Law Dictionary — contain an entry for this term, which suggests it was either highly specialized, regionally specific to New York practice, or already obsolescent at the time Black's recorded it.
The citation to *Lowe v. Bennett* is the most productive lead for reconstruction. That case is a real New York Miscellaneous Reports decision and may be the primary or sole authority for the term's legal meaning.
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Jurisdictional Note
The available evidence points exclusively to New York as the jurisdiction of origin and use. Researchers outside New York historical practice contexts are unlikely to encounter this term in operative legal documents.
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