Definition
A Latin term drawn from Roman civil law with two distinct and nearly opposite operational meanings, both of which appear in legal texts and instruments:
1. To lift, raise, or build up. In this sense, tollere describes the act of elevating a structure or raising something physically — most commonly encountered in the context of servitudes (easements), where the right or restriction to build upward was a recognized legal interest.
2. To take away, dissolve, destroy, or annul. In this sense, tollere describes the extinguishment of a legal obligation, judgment, or action. An obligation is tolled — in the classical civilian sense — when it is discharged by performance of what is owed. A judgment is tolled when it is quashed or annulled. An action is tolled when it is put to an end.
These two meanings are not contradictory in Roman legal thinking: both describe a change in the state of a thing — one upward, one toward nullity. Context determines which meaning applies, and researchers must attend carefully to that context when reading classical sources.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Tollere" has no standard modern English common usage. It survives primarily in legal and ecclesiastical Latin.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an English entry; recognized only as a Latin verb meaning "to lift" or "to take away."
The editorial note here is directional: English legal usage absorbed one branch of tollere's meaning into the word "toll" (as in to toll a statute of limitations, or to toll a right of entry), but the English derivative carries its own doctrinal weight and should not be read back onto the Latin source without care. Tollere in its source form is broader and more varied than its English derivatives suggest.
Common Confusion
Tollere as "to raise" and tollere as "to extinguish" can generate genuine misreading in Roman-derived texts if the surrounding context — particularly whether the passage concerns construction servitudes or the discharge of obligations — is not identified first. Additionally, researchers familiar with the English legal term "toll" (meaning to bar or suspend) may import that narrower meaning into passages where tollere instead denotes simple dissolution of an obligation by payment. The concepts are related but not identical.
Why It Matters in Research
Tollere appears most reliably in two research contexts within the Law Mind corpus:
First, in servitudes doctrine. The phrase servitus altius non tollendi — the servitude of not building higher — depends directly on tollere in its constructive sense. This is a named servitude in Roman and civil law, and it will appear in treatises on property, easements, and neighboring rights. Researchers working on civil law jurisdictions (Louisiana, Quebec, Scotland, mixed systems) will encounter this phrase in foundational sources.
Second, in the law of obligations. The canonical formulation — tollitur omnis obligatio solutione ejus quod debetur (every obligation is dissolved by the payment of that which is due) — appears in Justinian's Institutes and in treatises that draw on Roman sources. This use of tollere as dissolution-by-performance is foundational to understanding how Roman law conceived of the life cycle of an obligation: created, performed, extinguished.
Researchers should also note that tollere appears in procedural contexts meaning to quash or put an end to an action or judgment. Calvinius's Lexicon and Spiegelius (cited in Burrill) are older reference authorities on this usage; Law Mind researchers encountering those citations should treat them as early-modern civilian scholarship rather than primary Roman sources.
The principal trap: tollere does not carry a unified meaning that can be safely assumed without context. A single passage may use tollere to mean construction, and an adjacent passage to mean extinguishment. This is not ambiguity — it is classical Latin operating normally — but it demands close reading.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the main edition and the supplemental second edition) gives only the constructive meaning: to lift up, raise, elevate, build up. This is the safer and more limited entry.
Burrill's Law Dictionary is substantially richer. Burrill captures both principal meanings — constructive and extinguishing — and further subdivides the extinguishing sense into dissolution of obligations (with citation to Justinian's Institutes), annulment of judgments (citing Calvinius and Spiegelius), and termination of actions. Burrill also points toward Fleta (the medieval English treatise drawing on Roman law), indicating that tollere in its extinguishing sense had some penetration into English legal literature, not merely civilian sources.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: neither Black's nor Burrill engages with the tension between the two meanings or flags the contextual dependence that governs which meaning applies. Researchers relying on Black's alone will have an incomplete picture. Burrill remains the more useful source for this term.
Jurisdictional Note
Tollere in its doctrinal sense is primarily a civil law term and will appear most often in sources from civil law jurisdictions and in comparative or Roman law scholarship. In common law jurisdictions, the term surfaces mainly in treatises engaging Roman sources or in discussions of the servitude altius non tollendi.