WITHOUT STINT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

WITHOUT STINTAuthored

The Law Mind • 908 words

Definition

Without stint means without limit or without any specified number. As a legal term of art, it appears most often in descriptions of rights, obligations, or grants that carry no quantitative restriction — particularly in contexts involving common rights, pasturage, and the use of shared land. A right exercised without stint is one not bounded by a fixed allocation or cap; the holder may exercise it to any extent.

The phrase appears in property and land law to describe common rights — such as common of pasture — where no limit is placed on the number of animals a commoner may put to graze. This distinguishes the right from a stinted common, where each commoner's use is fixed by number or proportion.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Stint" means a limitation, restriction, or fixed allotment of something. To do something "without stint" in ordinary English means to do it generously, freely, or without holding back.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defines "stint" as "a limit or restraint" and "without stint" as without limitation or restriction, commonly used to describe liberality or abundance.

The gap between common and legal meaning here is narrow in concept but precise in consequence. In ordinary speech, "without stint" suggests generosity of spirit. In legal property contexts — particularly in the law of commons — it is a technical descriptor with real consequences for the scope of a land right, distinguishing an unlimited common from one that is measured and apportioned.

Common Confusion

WITHOUT STINT vs. SANS NOMBRE: Burrill's cross-references "sans nombre" as effectively synonymous, and the two phrases are used interchangeably in older property law texts to describe an unstinted common right. Researchers should treat them as equivalent when encountered in historical sources. "Sans nombre" is the Law French form; "without stint" is the English equivalent. Neither carries an inherent difference in legal effect.

WITHOUT STINT vs. STINTED COMMON: A stinted common is the direct opposite — a common right bounded by a fixed number (the "stint"). The distinction matters enormously in historic property documents and enclosure proceedings. An unstinted or "without stint" common right is broader, harder to quantify for compensation purposes, and more frequently the subject of dispute in enclosure-era litigation and modern equivalents.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering "without stint" in historical legal materials — particularly in deeds, manor court records, enclosure awards, and early treatises on common rights — should note several navigational points.

First, the term is overwhelmingly a property law term in practice, even though the historical dictionaries define it in plain, abstract terms ("without limit; without any specified number"). The abstract definition obscures the term's primary home in the law of commons and pasturage. A researcher finding it in a contract or pleading context should treat it as general limitation language; a researcher finding it in a conveyance or land grant should immediately connect it to the law of common rights.

Second, the term is historically significant in English enclosure law. Unstinted commons were subject to enclosure proceedings, and the valuation of "without stint" rights was a persistent legal problem: how do you compensate for a right with no defined quantity? This created litigation and legislative attention that a researcher working with pre-20th century English land materials will encounter repeatedly.

Third, American usage of the term is limited but not absent. Colonial-era land grants and early state property disputes occasionally used English common-law terminology including stinting language. Researchers working in early American property records should be alert to the phrase, particularly in jurisdictions with strong English common law inheritance.

Fourth, the phrase appears in dictionary entries immediately adjacent to "WITHOUT THIS, THAT" — a completely different legal term used in pleading traverses. The proximity in alphabetical arrangement has occasionally caused indexing confusion in older digests. Do not conflate the two.

Historical Dictionary Support

All three source dictionaries — Black's (2nd Ed.), Bouvier's, and Burrill's — give identical or near-identical definitions: "without limit; without any specified number." The agreement is complete and unremarkable, suggesting the term was not contested or evolving at the time these dictionaries were compiled.

Burrill alone adds the cross-reference to "Sans nombre," which is useful and reflects Burrill's characteristic attention to Law French and Latin equivalents. This cross-reference is the most substantive addition any of the three sources offers beyond the bare definition.

None of the three dictionaries contextualizes the term within the law of commons or pasturage, which is a notable omission given that the phrase's legal significance is almost entirely situated there. Researchers relying solely on these dictionary entries would receive a technically accurate but practically thin definition. The phrase's real weight in land law must be recovered from treatises on common rights, not from these dictionary entries alone.

Jurisdictional Note

The term carries its greatest legal weight in English law and jurisdictions with strong English common law property traditions. In American jurisdictions, the law of common rights never developed the same complexity as in England, and the phrase "without stint" appears far less frequently in American legal materials. Researchers working in English or early colonial sources will encounter it far more than those working in modern American property law.

WITHOUT STINTmain

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

Without limit; without any specified number. WITHOUT THIS, THAT. In pleading. Formai words used in pleadings by way of traverse, particularly by way of special traverse, (g. v.,) importing an express denial of some matter of fact alleged in a previous pleading. Steph. Pl. 168, 169, 179, 180. WITNESS, v. To subscribe one’s name to a deed, will, or other document, for the purpose of attesting its authenticity, and proving its: execution, if required, by bearing witness thereto. WITNESS, n. In the primary sense of the word, a witness is a person who has knowledge of an event. As the most direct mode of acquiring knowledge of an event is by seeing it, ‘witness’ has acquired the sense of a person who is present at and observes a transaction. Sweet. See State v. Desforges, 47 La. Ann. 1167, 17 South. 811; In re Losee's Will, 13 Misc. Rep. 298, 34 N. ¥Y. Supp. 1120; Bliss v. Shuman, 47 Me. 248. A witness is a person whose declaration under oath (or affirmation) is received as evidence for any purpose, whether such declaration be made on oral examination or by deposition or affidavit. Code Civ. Proc. Cal. § 1878; Gen. St. Minn. 1878, c. 73, § 6. One who {Is called upon to be present at a transaction, as a wedding, or the making of a will, that he may thereafter, if necessary, testify to the transaction. In conveyancing. One who sees the €xecution of an instrument, and subscribes it, for the purpose of confirming its authenticity by his testimony. —Adverse witness. <A witness whose mind discloses a bias hostile to the party examining him; not a witness whose evidence, being honestly given, is adverse to the case of the examinant. rown; Greenough v. Eccles, § C. B. (N. S.) 801.—Attesting witness. See ATTESTATION.—Competent witness. See ComPETENT.—Credible witness. See CREDIBLE. —Prosecuting witness. See that title— Subscribing witness. See that title—Swift witness. See that title. WITNESSING PART, in a deed or other formal instrument, is that part which comes after the recitals, or, where there are no re-

WITHOUT STINTmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

Without limit; without any specified number. WITHOUT THIS, THAT. In Pleading. These are technical words used in a traverse (q. v.) for the purpose of denying a material fact in the preced- ing pleadings, whether declaration, plea, replication, etc. The Latin term is absque học (q. v.). Com. Dig. Pleader (G1); 1 Chitty, Pl. 576, note a. WITNESS (Anglo-Saxon witan, to know). One who testifies to what he knows. One who testifies under oath to something which he knows at first hand. 1 Greenl. Ev. §§ 98, 328. One who is called upon to be present at a transaction, as, a wedding, or the mak- ing of a will. When a person signs his name to a written instrument to signify that the same was executed in his presence, he is called an attesting witness. The principal rules relating to witnesses are the same in civil and in criminal cases, and the same in all the courts, as well in those various courts whose forms of pro- ceeding are borrowed from the civil law, as in those of the common law; 8 Greenl. Εν. §§ 249, 402; 2 Ves. Ch. 41; 17 Mass. 303.

WITHOUT STINTmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

Without limit; without any specified number. See Sans nombre. WITHOUT THIS, THAT. [L. Lat. absque hoc quod, sine hoc quod; L. Fr. sans ceo que.] In pleading. Formal words used in pleadings by way of traverse, particularly by way of special traverse, (q. v.) importing an express denial of some matter of fact alleged in a previous pleading. Steph. Pl. 168, 169, 179, 180. Id. Appendix, Note (48.) See Absque hoc.

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