Definition
An archaic Latin term appearing in early English legal records meaning to turn aside, divert, or redirect something — typically a watercourse, road, path, or similar way — so as to alter its natural or established course. The term connotes an act of physical diversion rather than mere obstruction or interference.
Why It Matters in Research
Trestonare is a term of purely historical significance, appearing in medieval and early modern English legal documents, particularly in actions concerning water rights, rights of way, and nuisance. Researchers encountering the term in primary sources should understand it in context of early common law pleading, where Latin and Law French terminology was standard. The word surfaces most naturally in disputes over watercourses — a predecessor concern to what modern law addresses under riparian rights and easement doctrine.
The term's appearance in Rapalje & Lawrence, itself sourced from Cowell's Interpreter (the early seventeenth-century legal glossary), signals that by the late nineteenth century this was already treated as archaic vocabulary requiring explanation rather than active legal usage. Researchers working in manuscripts, plea rolls, or early treatises dealing with water diversion, highway obstruction, or similar physical interference will benefit from recognizing the term rather than treating it as an unknown Latin phrase.
Because the word does not appear in the major modern legal dictionaries (Black's, Bouvier), its absence from secondary research tools should not be read as a signal that the underlying concept is absent from the corpus. The legal acts it describes — diversion of water, turning of roads — are richly represented under later terminology. When trestonare appears in a historical source, the researcher should pivot to related concepts: nuisance, watercourse, right of way, and the early action of quod permittat.
Historical Dictionary Support
The sole dictionary source for this entry is Rapalje & Lawrence's Dictionary of American and English Law (1883), which provides a brief definition — "to turn or divert another way" — and attributes the term directly to John Cowell's The Interpreter (1607). This chain of attribution is itself instructive: Cowell compiled glosses of legal Latin and Law French terms drawn from the practice of English courts, and Rapalje & Lawrence largely reproduced Cowell on rare and archaic vocabulary without independent elaboration.
No substantive divergence exists among historical sources because the term appears in only one significant secondary source consulted; its rarity in the dictionary record likely reflects its rarity in practice even by the seventeenth century. Researchers should treat Cowell as the originating secondary authority and should expect to encounter the term, if at all, in medieval Latin legal instruments rather than in any post-Restoration pleading.
Jurisdictional Note
Trestonare is a term of English legal Latin with no identified presence in American legal practice. Researchers in American historical documents are extremely unlikely to encounter it; its relevance is confined to English records, primarily pre-seventeenth century.