TRANSPORT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TRANSPORTAuthored

The Law Mind • 1068 words

Definition

Transport has carried several distinct legal meanings across time and jurisdiction:

Conveyance of land (historical). In old New York law, transport was a term of art for the conveyance of real property — a deed or instrument by which title or a right in land passed from one party to another. This usage is now obsolete in American practice.

Physical movement of persons or goods. In modern regulatory and tort contexts, transport refers to the act of carrying persons, goods, or cargo from one location to another, whether by road, rail, air, or water. This meaning underlies a broad field of statutory and common law governing carriers, liability, and commerce.

Penal deportation (historical). Historically, particularly in English criminal law, to transport meant to banish a convicted criminal to a penal colony — most notably to Australia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Transportation in this sense was a formal criminal sentence, distinct from ordinary imprisonment.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To carry or bear from one place to another; to convey. Also, to deport to a penal colony; and informally, to move someone to strong emotion.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To carry or bear from one place to another; to remove; to convey. Also, to carry a criminal into banishment. And, to carry away with vehement emotion — to ravish with pleasure or ecstasy.

The ordinary meaning of transport maps reasonably well onto the modern legal sense of physical movement. The gap appears at the edges: in common speech, transport carries no freight of property conveyance or penal exile, meanings that were legally precise and consequential in earlier periods. A researcher reading an eighteenth-century document in which someone was "transported" must recognize this as a criminal sentence, not a shipment.

Common Confusion

The historical New York usage — transport as conveyance of land — is easily confused with simple physical removal. The Anderson's Dictionary entry makes this explicit: the word carries the idea of bearing a right or title from one party to another, not extinction of that right. A declaration on a note that recites a transport implies passage of beneficial interest but not necessarily legal title — a distinction that matters in mortgage and negotiable instrument disputes. Researchers who read transport in an old deed as a generic synonym for delivery miss this precise property-law content.

Why It Matters in Research

Corpus researchers face three distinct traps with this term:

First, temporal layering. The same word, in the same corpus, means three different things depending on the era and jurisdiction of the source: land conveyance in colonial and early American documents, criminal deportation in English and early American criminal records, and physical carriage in modern regulatory and tort materials. Search results will commingle all three without flag.

Second, the obsolete New York conveyance usage. Black's and Burrill's both note this as old New York law, which means it appears in colonial-era deeds, early state court records, and property documents from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It does not survive into modern property practice under that name. Researchers working in New York title chain materials from this period should treat transport as equivalent to deed or conveyance, not as mere physical movement.

Third, modern regulatory density. In contemporary law, transport is a load-bearing term across multiple regulatory regimes: the Interstate Commerce Act, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, the Railway Labor Act, hazardous materials transport statutes, and aviation law. Each regime defines transport or transportation with precision for its own purposes. A definition adequate for one statute may be inapplicable in another. Researchers moving between regulatory sources should verify the operative statutory definition rather than relying on a general meaning.

The tort connection is significant: respondeat superior liability in transportation contexts turns heavily on whether an employee was engaged in transport at the time of an incident — a question courts define narrowly or broadly depending on the regulatory and factual context.

Historical Dictionary Support

The four historical dictionaries present a fragmented picture that, taken together, is less than the sum of its parts. Black's (both editions) and Burrill's agree that transport in old New York law meant a conveyance of land, but none of them develops the concept beyond that brief note. No historical dictionary in this corpus addresses the modern regulatory meaning at all, which reflects the era in which these dictionaries were compiled — before the Interstate Commerce Act and the federal regulatory apparatus that now dominates transport law.

Anderson's entry is the most analytically useful. It clarifies that transport, as a property concept, carries no idea of extinction of right — only the bearing over of title or interest from one person to another. The notes on mortgage foreclosure and the distinction between beneficial and legal title suggest that transport appeared in contested negotiable instrument and real property pleadings, where precision about what exactly passed mattered to the outcome.

The historical dictionaries are collectively silent on the penal deportation meaning, which is surprising given its prominence in English criminal law through the mid-nineteenth century. Researchers relying solely on these sources would miss that usage entirely. Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary are more candid on this point than the legal dictionaries.

Jurisdictional Note

The land-conveyance meaning of transport is specific to early New York law and should not be assumed to have carried the same technical meaning in other colonial or early American jurisdictions. Modern regulatory definitions of transport and transportation vary by statute and agency; federal definitions under Department of Transportation regulations do not automatically govern state common-law tort claims, and vice versa.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

Motor Vehicle and Transportation Torts — Respondeat Superior in Transportation (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)
Motor Vehicle and Transportation Torts — No-Fault Insurance Systems (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)
The Railway Labor Act and Transportation Industry Labor Law (The Law Mind Employment & Labor Law Encyclopedia)

TRANSPORTmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

A conveyance of land. In old New York law.

TRANSPORTmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

In old New York es A conveyance of land. ...__s, Sagi 7 ae

TRANSPORTmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

2, n. There is no meaning of the word which carries the idea of an act of extinction, or any other idea than that of the bearing over of a right or title to property in a thing from one to another.1 In a declaration on a note, implies a passing of the beneficial interest, but not necessarily of the legal title.2 Foreclosure of a mortgage and the becoming absolute of the title in the mortgagee by the failure to redeem constitute a "transfer" of the property, in the sense of a statute providing that the real estate of any tax-payer shall be liable until a transfer thereof is made. Transferable. Includes every means by which property may be passed from one person to another. Also spelled transferrible. Non-transferable. Not admitting of transfer to another person. Transferrer or transferror. He to whom a transfer, an assignment, or a conveyance is made. Transferee. The recipient in any such case. See further ABANDON, 1; ASSIGN, 2; BEARER; CONVEYANCE, 2; DELIVERY, 1; INDORSE, 2; SECURITY: STOCK, 3; TRANSFERRE. Transient foreigner. One who visits a country without intention of remaining.1 Transient person. Not exactly a person on a journey from one known place to another, but rather a wanderer ever on the tramp.2 Transitive. Passing over to another. A transitive, as opposed to an intransitive, covenant, is an obligation which devolves also upon the covenantor's representatives. Transitory. Following the person. A transitory, as distinguished from a local, action, rests upon a transaction which might have taken place anywhere. See ACTION, 2; To carry, convey, from one place to another. Yates v. Iams, 10 Tex. 170 (1853), Hemphill, C. J. 2 Middlebury v. Waltham, 6 Vt. 203 (1834), Mattocks, J. See Amory v. Fellowes, 5 Mass. 225 (1809). • See Gibson v. Cincinnati Inquirer, 2 Flip. 125 (1877); Odgers, Sl. & Lib. 109-10, cases. * Pelzer v. Benish, 67 Wis. 291 (1886); 61 id. 626. • Stowe v. Thomas, 2 Wall. Jr. 547, 566, 568 (1853); Emerson v. Davies. 8 Story, 780 (1845); Shook v. Ran- • Gathercole v. Smith, 17 Ch. Div. 9 (1881), Lush, L. J. kin, 6 Biss. 477 (1875). 10 Pet. 161, 175; 64 Pa. 371. * United States v. Sheldon, 2 Wheat. 120 (1817).

TRANSPORTv.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

To carry or bear from one place to another; to remove; to convey; as, to transport goods; to transport troops. Hakluyt. To carry, or cause to be carried, into banishment, as a criminal; to banish. To carry away with vehement emotion, as joy, sorrow, complacency, anger, etc.; to ravish with pleasure or ecstasy; as, music transports the soul. [They] laugh as if transported with some fit Of passion. Milton. We shall then be transported with a nobler . . . wonder. South.

TRANSPORTn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

Transportation; carriage; conveyance. The Romans . . . stipulated with the Carthaginians to furnish them with ships for transport and war. Arbuthnot. A vessel employed for transporting, especially for carrying soldiers, warlike stores, or provisions, from one place to another, or to convey convicts to their destination; -- called also transport ship, transport vessel. Vehement emotion; passion; ecstasy; rapture. With transport views the airy rule his own, And swells on an imaginary throne. Pope. Say not, in transports of despair, That all your hopes are fled. Doddridge. A convict transported, or sentenced to exile.

transportverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

To carry or bear from one place to another; to remove; to convey. | To deport to a penal colony. | To move (someone) to strong emotion; to carry away.

transportnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

An act of transporting; conveyance. | The state of being transported by emotion; rapture. | A vehicle used to transport (passengers, mail, freight, troops etc.) | A tractor-trailer. | The system of transporting passengers, etc. in a particular region; the vehicles used in such a system. | A device that moves recording tape across the read/write heads of a tape recorder or video recorder etc. | A deported convict.

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