Definition
A Latin term of medieval European legal usage meaning to chop, chip, or haggle. The term appears in old European legal texts and glossaries, principally as recorded by Sir Henry Spelman, and describes a physical act of cutting or chipping — most likely in contexts involving the working or defacement of materials, goods, or possibly currency. It carries no active doctrinal significance in modern law.
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Why It Matters in Research
SCAPELLARE is essentially a glossary term — one of the class of entries that historical legal dictionaries preserved from medieval Latin sources rather than from living legal practice. Researchers encountering it in primary sources should treat it as an artifact of ecclesiastical, feudal, or Continental European legal writing rather than as a term with English common law application.
Its presence in multiple dictionaries traces to a single authority: Spelman's Glossarium Archaeologicum, a seventeenth-century antiquarian glossary of medieval Latin and Old English legal terms. All four Law Mind source dictionaries reproduce the same compact definition with no elaboration, confirming that none of the compilers drew on independent sources. This uniformity signals that the term had no circulation in American or English case law accessible to these editors — it was copied forward as a matter of completeness, not utility.
A researcher who encounters SCAPELLARE in a medieval charter, ecclesiastical record, or Continental legal instrument should consult Spelman directly rather than rely on these secondary dictionary entries, which offer no context beyond the bare definition. The term may relate to practices involving timber, stone-cutting, coin-clipping, or the working of materials subject to trade or fiscal regulation — all areas where medieval European law imposed specific obligations and penalties — but the dictionary record alone does not resolve which context applies.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is notable for appending a citation to a Maine case (71 Me. 373) immediately after SCAPELLARE under the heading SCATTERING (on a ballot). This is a formatting artifact, not a citation to authority for SCAPELLARE itself. Researchers should not read the Maine citation as legally connected to the term.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill — provide identical substantive content: to chop, to chip, or to haggle. Burrill's explicitly labels it "L. Lat." (Law Latin or Medieval Latin), confirming its character as a term of learned Latin legal writing rather than vernacular legal usage. No dictionary offers a usage example, a historical document reference beyond Spelman, or any indication of the legal consequence that attached to the act described.
The unanimity of the sources and the absence of any expansion across editions suggests the term was never litigated in reported English or American decisions accessible to these compilers. It occupies the same class as other Spelman-sourced entries: preserved for scholarly completeness, not for practitioner use.
Spelman's Glossarium Archaeologicum (posthumously published, 1664) remains the foundational primary source for this term and should be the first stop for any researcher needing substantive context.
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