Definition
To put out, eject, or remove a person from possession or enjoyment of property, office, or a legal right. In legal usage, OUST carries a specific transitive force: it denotes the act of depriving someone of what they lawfully hold — whether an estate, a franchise, a corporate office, or a right to be heard in a proceeding. The term appears both as a verb describing an act of dispossession and as a component of compound legal phrases (see OUSTER, OUST LE MAIN).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "To expel; to remove."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 redirects to "Oast" — an oven or kiln — reflecting no relevant common-language entry for OUST as a verb. The overlap between the common and legal meanings is unusually close in modern English; both signify forcible removal. The legal significance, however, is more precise: in law, OUST implies removal from a recognized legal right or entitlement — possession of land, enjoyment of a franchise, or standing in a proceeding — not merely physical expulsion. A landlord who changes the locks ousts a tenant in both the common and legal senses, but a court that strips a corporation of its charter ousts it in only the legal sense.
Common Confusion
OUST / OUSTER: OUST is the verb; OUSTER is the noun denoting the act or the resulting condition of dispossession. Researchers frequently encounter OUSTER in older pleading records where OUST appears in modern sources describing the same event. The two terms are related but not interchangeable — an action may be brought to remedy an OUSTER without the plaintiff using the word OUST at all. See OUSTER.
OUST / EJECT: EJECT (and the action of EJECTMENT) is the formal common-law remedy for recovering possession of real property from one who has ousted the rightful possessor. OUST describes the wrong; EJECT describes the remedy and the action brought to enforce it. Conflating them in historical research can cause misreading of procedural posture.
Why It Matters in Research
The verb OUST appears in Law Mind sources across several distinct legal contexts, and recognizing which context applies is essential for accurate research:
Real property. In land law, OUST most commonly describes dispossession of a freehold — one co-tenant, for example, ousting another, thereby triggering the right to bring an action in ejectment or, in older practice, an assize. Researchers working in property records before the mid-nineteenth century will encounter OUST in this sense frequently.
Franchise and corporate law. Burrill's Law Dictionary preserves the usage of OUST in the context of corporate franchises — depriving a corporation of its chartered rights. This meaning is largely dormant in modern usage but appears with regularity in nineteenth-century equity records and quo warranto proceedings. Researchers examining early corporate litigation should watch for this sense.
Procedural use. OUST appears in phrases like "ousted of a plea in abatement," meaning a party loses the right to raise a procedural defense. This usage is nearly extinct in modern practice but surfaces in common-law pleading records. Burrill's entry, citing Lord Ellenborough in 3 East 62, preserves this sense.
Old French compounds. Bouvier preserves the Law French root and associated compounds — OUSTER LE MER (beyond the sea), OUSTER EIT (he went away), LE OUSTER (the uppermost) — that appear in medieval and early modern English legal records. Researchers working with Year Books, Bracton-era materials, or early Chancery records may encounter these forms. They are not synonymous with the dispossession sense of OUST and require separate treatment.
Jurisdictional trap. In American sources after roughly 1850, OUST increasingly appears in the phrase "oust jurisdiction" — meaning to deprive a court of subject-matter jurisdiction by contract, statute, or forum-selection clause. This jurisdictional sense is entirely absent from the historical dictionaries indexed here and represents a significant gap between historical and modern corpus materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) gives identical definitions: "To put out; to eject; to remove or deprive; to deprive of the possession or enjoyment of an estate or franchise." This formulation is workmanlike but static — it does not distinguish between the property, franchise, and procedural senses of the term.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the most informative of the shelf sources for historical purposes, preserving the Law French root (ouster, oultre), the Latin equivalent (ultra), and a cluster of compound phrases that illuminate the term's broader medieval usage. Bouvier also cross-references 3 Blackstone's Commentaries 201–202, which remains the authoritative common-law treatment of ouster in the property context.
Burrill's Law Dictionary offers the most nuanced treatment, explicitly distinguishing "old English law" usage (to take away) from "modern law" usage (to deprive a corporation of franchises; to put out or eject), and citing specific authorities for each. Burrill's note on being "ousted of a plea in abatement" — drawn from 3 East 62 — preserves a procedural sense that Black's and Bouvier's pass over.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry for OUST is not useful; the text reproduced appears to be a misaligned excerpt concerning an ecclesiastical custom and the Latin phrase PATER NOSTER rather than any substantive treatment of OUST.
The historical dictionaries collectively miss the jurisdictional sense of OUST that dominates modern American legal usage. Researchers should treat the shelf definitions as authoritative for property and franchise contexts through the nineteenth century, but supplement with modern secondary sources for twentieth- and twenty-first-century jurisdictional usage.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase "oust jurisdiction" — used to describe contractual or statutory provisions that strip a court of authority to hear a case — is an American development with no direct equivalent in English common-law sources. English courts historically used different framing for analogous doctrines. Researchers comparing American and English materials on jurisdictional agreements should not assume terminological equivalence.