Definition
A person who has committed sodomy. In historical legal usage, the term carried formal legal status: a person adjudicated or convicted of sodomy, with attendant civil and criminal consequences attached to that status. As a label, it appeared in statutes, indictments, and legal treatises to identify both the offense and the offender's resulting legal position.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who practices sodomy; a sodomist. Also, a native or inhabitant of Sodom.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): An inhabitant of Sodom. One guilty of sodomy.
The legal usage and the common usage track closely in surface form, but diverge in function. In legal texts, "sodomite" is not merely a descriptive label — it is a term of legal art identifying an offender class bearing specific disabilities. The common usage is descriptive or biblical; the legal usage is operative, triggering consequences.
Common Confusion
"Sodomite" and "sodomist" are sometimes used interchangeably in general writing, but in legal texts "sodomite" is the predominant term of art and carries the weight of formal legal consequences. Do not assume that a historical legal source using "sodomite" is making a merely moral or religious characterization — the term signals a defined legal status.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a term of historical legal significance. It appears in pre-twentieth-century indictments, statutes, and treatises and will not appear in modern American or English legal instruments following the decriminalization of consensual sodomy in most jurisdictions. Researchers working in colonial American law, English ecclesiastical law, or nineteenth-century criminal law will encounter "sodomite" as both a charging term and a status designation.
The most important research trap: early legal sources attached civil disabilities to the status of sodomite that had no counterpart in most other criminal convictions. Bouvier specifically records the loss of testamentary capacity — the power to make a will — as a historical consequence of being adjudicated a sodomite. This disability does not appear in Black's editions and reflects an older ecclesiastical-influenced common law tradition. Researchers analyzing property, inheritance, or probate records from earlier periods should be alert to this disability when the decedent's character or conviction is at issue in surrounding documents.
Jurisdictional divergence matters here. The civil disabilities attached to the status varied significantly between English ecclesiastical courts and American colonial and early state courts. English law treated sodomy as a felony under the Buggery Act of 1533 and its successors, with attainder consequences. American colonial courts were more variable. Neither Black's edition records these disabilities in detail — that information is preserved in Bouvier and in primary sources.
The term will appear in corpus materials under variant spellings, including "sodomyte" in early modern English legal documents. Cross-reference against the SODOMY entry when researching the offense itself, as most substantive law is organized under the act rather than the actor.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical sources define the term identically in substance: a person guilty of sodomy. Black's first and second editions offer no elaboration beyond this bare identification. Bouvier adds the most legally significant detail, noting that the offender "was deprived of the power of making a will" — a civil disability that reflects the historical treatment of sodomy not only as a crime but as a status that could strip a person of ordinary legal capacity. This testamentary disability is not carried forward in Black's, suggesting either that it had fallen from active legal use by the time of Black's compilation or that Black's was simply less attentive to this dimension of the law.
None of the three historical sources address the shift in legal treatment over time, the distinction between ecclesiastical and common law jurisdiction over the offense, or the eventual decriminalization of consensual acts that rendered this term obsolete as a legal status. Researchers should not treat the brevity of these entries as evidence that the legal consequences were similarly thin — the historical reality was considerably more severe, and Bouvier's brief note about testamentary incapacity is a prompt to look further in primary sources rather than a complete account.
Jurisdictional Note
The term carried different weight in English ecclesiastical courts, English common law courts, and American jurisdictions. American states that retained sodomy statutes into the twentieth century defined and punished the offense variously, but the formal civil disability of testamentary incapacity did not survive broadly into American statutory law. Researchers should not assume uniformity across jurisdictions or periods.