Definition
"Ranty" does not appear to be a recognized legal term. The source material attributed to Rapalje & Lawrence contains no entry for this term; the dictionary text provided under this heading consists of misattributed fragments drawn from unrelated entries on insurance, deposit, property, and guaranty. No legal definition of "ranty" exists in the historical or modern legal lexicon.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete form of "randy."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Wild; noisy; boisterous.
Editorial note: The common-language senses are archaic and colloquial. Neither has ever carried legal meaning. The gap between common and legal usage is moot because there is no legal usage to compare against.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "ranty" in a legal source almost certainly face one of two situations: a typographical or OCR corruption of another term, or a transcription error in a compiled index. The Rapalje & Lawrence fragments surfacing under this heading are plainly misassigned — they belong to entries on insurance (citing 105 Mass. 160 and 2 Johns. (N.Y.) Cas. 149), deposit, and guaranty. This kind of index displacement is a known hazard in digitized historical legal dictionaries, where OCR errors or damaged page headers cause content to migrate under incorrect headwords.
If you encountered "ranty" in a primary source, consider whether the intended term was: WARRANTRY (a variant spelling path toward WARRANTY or WARRANTRY), GUARANTY, or a proper name rendered in lowercase. Searching the surrounding context for the subject matter — contract, property, insurance — will usually resolve the ambiguity faster than chasing the headword itself.
Do not treat the Rapalje & Lawrence fragments appearing here as definitions of "ranty." They are not. Cite those fragments only under their proper headings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Neither Rapalje & Lawrence nor any other standard historical legal dictionary (Bouvier, Black's, Burrill, Tomlin, Jacob) contains a substantive entry for "ranty" as a legal term. The fragments attributed to Rapalje & Lawrence in the source material — covering insurance, deposit, property warranties, and guaranty — appear to be cataloging or digitization errors rather than intentional entries under this headword. Historical dictionaries are silent on this term in any legal capacity, which is itself significant: absence across the full shelf of standard references strongly indicates the term carries no technical legal meaning.