Definition
Wat is an archaic form of the word "waste" as it appeared in early English legal writing, functioning as a variant spelling rather than a distinct legal concept. In the historical legal sources, "wat" appears within discussions of the action of waste — a real (or mixed) action by which a landlord or reversioner sought recovery against a tenant who had committed waste, meaning the destruction or material alteration of the leased property to the permanent injury of the inheritance. The entry in Burrill's Law Dictionary is fragmentary, but places "wat" in the context of the common law action of waste as described by Blackstone: a mixed action, partly real (to recover the land or place wasted) and partly personal (to recover damages). Upon proof of waste, the plaintiff recovered both the wasted premises and treble damages.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A kind of stew or curry eaten in Ethiopia and Eritrea, also spelled "wot" or "wet."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately entered; the food meaning is of Ethiopian/Eritrean origin and does not appear in 19th-century American English dictionaries.
Editorial note: The culinary and legal uses of "wat" share nothing beyond spelling. A researcher encountering "wat" in a legal corpus should have no occasion for confusion, as the food term does not appear in English legal writing. The legal use is strictly a spelling variant of "waste" confined to historical manuscript and dictionary sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "wat" in historical English legal manuscripts, digests, or abridgments should treat it as a spelling variant of "waste" rather than a separate term of art. Early English legal orthography was inconsistent, and the letter combination "ste" was frequently contracted or altered in manuscript and early print sources. A corpus search for "wat" will surface fragmentary hits — like the Burrill entry — that are properly understood only when cross-referenced with the full doctrine of waste.
The action of waste itself is significant for historical property research. It was a mixed action at common law, a category that blurred the line between real actions (which recovered seisin of land) and personal actions (which recovered damages). By Blackstone's time, the action had become well-settled but was already falling into disuse as equitable remedies and the action of ejectment displaced the older real action forms. Researchers working in pre-19th-century English property records, plea rolls, or treatise literature should be aware that the action of waste — and its spelling variants — appears in procedural contexts that may seem unfamiliar against the backdrop of modern landlord-tenant law.
The Burrill excerpt references Roscoe's Real Actions (pp. 107, 121–125) and Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Com. 227–228) as the substantive authorities. Both remain accessible in Law Mind's historical corpus and provide the full procedural and doctrinal context that the Burrill fragment presupposes.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary does not treat "wat" as an independent entry with its own definition. The fragment preserved in the corpus is a mid-sentence continuation — likely the tail end of an entry for "waste" or "wast" — that describes the mixed character of the action, its dual recovery (land plus treble damages), and its eventual obsolescence. This is consistent with Blackstone's account in Book III, Chapter 13, where waste is classified as a mixed action and the treble damages remedy is traced to the Statute of Gloucester (1278).
What the historical dictionaries, including Burrill, do not fully address is the degree to which American courts adapted or abandoned the English action of waste. In the American states, the action of waste was largely superseded by statutory remedies and equity jurisdiction by the mid-19th century, meaning that the old mixed action form described in Blackstone and Roscoe has limited direct applicability to American case law.