Definition
To replevy is to restore distrained or wrongfully taken goods to their original possessor by means of a replevin proceeding, upon the possessor's giving security — typically in the form of sureties or a bond — to prosecute the action and to return the property if the court ultimately finds against them. The act of replevying is the procedural mechanism by which the remedy of replevin is executed: rather than waiting for final judgment, the original possessor regains custody of the goods at the outset of litigation, with the security serving as the distrainor's guarantee.
Secondarily, and now largely archaic, to replevy has been used to mean the release of a person from custody upon bail — that is, to free a person from prison on their finding security to answer the charge against them. This personal usage is rarely encountered outside historical sources.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To return goods to their rightful owner by replevin; to recover goods. Also, to bail.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To take or get back, by a writ for that purpose, goods and chattels wrongfully taken or detained, upon giving security to try the right to them in a suit at law; to bail.
The common and legal meanings track closely here, which is unsurprising — the word has always been a term of art. The gap worth noting is directional: common usage tends to frame replevying as the plaintiff recovering goods, while the legal framework is more precise: the sheriff or officer redispatches possession to the original possessor upon receipt of the security. The act is not self-help; it is court-supervised redelivery. Researchers who read replevy as simply "getting goods back" may underestimate the procedural conditionality built into the term.
Common Confusion
Replevy is the verb; replevin is the noun — the action itself. The two are sometimes used interchangeably in older sources, which creates ambiguity. Replevy describes what happens at the threshold of a replevin action (the provisional redelivery of goods); it does not describe the final judgment or the underlying cause of action as a whole. A court might replevy goods to a plaintiff who ultimately loses the case, in which case the security is forfeited and the goods returned to the distrainor. The temporary restoration of possession and the final resolution of title or right are distinct events.
The secondary meaning — replevying a person from jail — should not be confused with modern bail procedures. The personal replevy was a distinct historical writ with its own procedural logic, not simply an older word for posting bail bond.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with early American and English common law sources will encounter replevy in two distinct procedural contexts — goods and persons — and must not assume the same rules or consequences applied to both. By the time of the major American law dictionaries, the personal replevy was already being described as largely obsolete; its appearance in a source should prompt attention to the jurisdiction and period.
In corpus research, the verb form replevy and its conjugations (replevied, replevying) will often appear in procedural sections of digests and form books rather than in substantive discussions of property or tort law. Searching for replevin alone will miss procedural discussions that focus on the sheriff's act of redelivery — the moment of replevying — rather than the action as a whole.
Jurisdictional variation matters here. Many American states modified or replaced common law replevin by statute, and the conditions under which goods could be replevied — the form and sufficiency of the security, the timing, who could demand redelivery — varied considerably. A definition drawn from one state's practice may not translate to another. Historical sources from the same period may reflect different local procedures without signaling that divergence.
Pay attention also to the relationship between replevy and the writ of replevin versus the writ of detinue or trover. Older sources sometimes used replevy loosely in contexts that a modern reader might associate with those neighboring actions. Burrill's abbreviated entry is a reminder that not all historical dictionaries treated the term with the same thoroughness; researchers should not assume a terse entry reflects a simple or uniform practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary present essentially identical definitions and agree on the two core meanings: goods returned on security, and persons bailed from prison. Bouvier's is the most concise, directing readers back to the parent entry for replevin rather than elaborating. Black's is marginally more detailed on the procedural mechanism, specifying that the security is given to prosecute the action against the distrainor — a point that clarifies the conditionality of the redelivery.
Burrill's entry is fragmentary in the available text, offering the basic practice note ("to get back goods on a writ of replevin") without addressing the secondary personal meaning or the security requirement. Researchers relying solely on Burrill for this term would have an incomplete picture.
None of the historical sources dwell on what happens when the plaintiff fails — that is, what becomes of the security and the goods — which is a practical gap. The conditionality of the redelivery (that possession is provisional and forfeiture follows an adverse judgment) is implied rather than stated. For that procedural detail, researchers should look to treatises on common law pleading and practice rather than dictionary entries alone.
Jurisdictional Note
American statutory replevin varied significantly by state, and many jurisdictions modified the security and timing requirements that governed when and how goods could be replevied. Some states abolished the common law form of action entirely and replaced it with statutory proceedings that use different vocabulary. Researchers should identify the applicable jurisdiction and period before applying any general definition.