Definition
In law, a "thing" is any object, entity, or interest capable of being owned, possessed, or made the subject of legal rights. The concept is foundational to property law: the entire structure of ownership, possession, transfer, and protection depends on identifying what counts as a "thing" to which those rights attach.
Legal usage distinguishes broadly between two categories:
1. Things real (res reales): Permanent, fixed, immovable objects that cannot be relocated. Land, tenements, and hereditaments are the classic examples. Rights in things real are governed by real property law.
2. Things personal (res personales): Movable objects — goods, money, chattels, and other items that can accompany or be transferred by their owner. Rights in things personal are governed by personal property law and, in commercial contexts, by the law of sales and secured transactions.
Beyond tangible objects, modern legal systems recognize incorporeal things — rights and interests treated as property even though they have no physical substance. Patents, copyrights, debts, and easements are things in this extended sense.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "That which is considered to exist as a separate entity, object, quality or concept"; also used loosely to mean any object, custom, phenomenon, or possession.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Whatever exists, or is conceived to exist, as a separate entity, whether animate or inanimate; any separable or distinguishable object of thought."
The ordinary meaning of "thing" is broad and casual — it can refer to an idea, a fashion trend, an action, or a vague referent. The legal meaning is narrower and purposeful: a thing must be capable of ownership or possession. Not everything that exists in a colloquial sense qualifies. A legal right may be a thing; a mere expectation or social custom generally is not.
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Common Confusion
"Thing" and "person" operate as opposites in classical Roman-derived legal taxonomy: persons hold rights, things are the objects of rights. This framework occasionally breaks down in modern law — corporations are legal persons, yet a corporation can itself be owned. Animals present a sharper problem: they are classified as things (personal property) under most common law systems, but animal welfare statutes and some judicial decisions have begun to complicate that classification by imposing duties and, in a few cases, recognizing limited cognizable interests. Researchers should not assume the traditional person/thing binary resolves cleanly in contemporary sources.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Things in possession: Tangible objects currently held or capable of immediate physical control.
Things in action (choses in action): Rights enforceable only through legal action, not by physical taking — debts, claims, contractual rights. Historically distinguished sharply from things in possession; the distinction shaped rules about assignment and transfer.
Things real: Immovables — land, buildings, fixtures, and rights issuing out of or attached to land.
Things personal: Movables — chattels, money, negotiable instruments, and all other property not classified as real.
Incorporeal things: Intangible rights treated as property — easements, profits, intellectual property, annuities, and similar interests.
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Why It Matters in Research
"Thing" is one of the oldest organizing terms in Western property law, and its presence in a historical source is almost always a signal that the author is working within a Roman or civil law conceptual framework — even when writing about common law. The res/thing distinction underlies the entire scheme of real versus personal property, which in turn drives jurisdiction over courts, choice of law, and the applicable rules of transfer and succession.
In early American and English texts, "things" and "property" are often used interchangeably, but they are not identical: "property" emphasizes the relationship between a person and an object; "thing" emphasizes the object itself as the unit of legal analysis. Conflating them can cause researchers to miss when an author is making a structural claim about what can be owned versus a relational claim about rights.
The term also appears in an entirely different doctrinal context — negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) — through the California Supreme Court's decision in Thing v. La Chusa, which formalized the bystander recovery test. Researchers encountering "Thing factors" or "Thing/Dillon" in tort materials should not assume any connection to the property law meaning. That usage is purely a case name, not a conceptual borrowing.
Historical sources will use "things in action" and "choses in action" as near-synonyms, but the French-derived "chose" was often preferred in formal pleading contexts. Corpus searches for one may not surface the other.
The real/personal distinction in historical sources can also mislead: fixtures — objects physically attached to land — occupied an unstable middle position, classified as things real for some purposes and things personal for others depending on context (landlord-tenant, sale of land, security interests). Sources will not always flag which classification they are applying.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law defines "thing" as "[s]ubject-matter; substance; effects; any object that may be possessed," and immediately maps the term onto the real/personal division. This is standard civilian-inflected common law taxonomy, tracing directly to Blackstone's Commentaries and through Blackstone back to Justinian's Institutes.
Anderson's definition captures the classical framework cleanly but, as with most nineteenth-century dictionaries, does not address incorporeal property in depth and offers no treatment of how "thing" functions at the edges — animals, digital assets, contractual rights that have become commodified. The entry reflects a property law universe where the categories were considered settled; modern legal systems have unsettled them considerably.
The Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary entries confirm that the ordinary English meaning was always broader than the legal meaning — a point Anderson implicitly acknowledges by grounding the legal definition specifically in the capacity for possession and dominion.
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Jurisdictional Note
Civil law jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, and most of continental Europe) preserve explicit statutory treatment of the thing/person distinction drawn from Roman law. Common law jurisdictions developed the same taxonomy through case law and treatise writing without always codifying it. Researchers moving between civil law and common law sources on property rights should expect the underlying concepts to align closely but the vocabulary and formal structure to differ.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia — Defamation and Privacy Torts: NIED — Bystander Recovery Rules (Dillon/Thing Factors): For the tort law use of "Thing" as a case name establishing the bystander NIED elements. Entirely separate from the property law meaning; cross-referenced here to prevent confusion when the term appears in tort research contexts.
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