Forms: 4–5 trespasour, 4–6 -passour, -oure, 5 -pasor, -owre, -passor, 5–6 -pacer, 6 passar, 6– trespasser. [ME. a. AF. trespassour = OF. trespasseor, agent-n. of trespasser to TRESPASS.] One who trespasses.
1. A transgressor, a law-breaker; a wrong-doer, sinner, offender.
[1292. Britton, I. xxi. § 11. Touz trespassours encountre la forme de nos estatuz.]
1362. Langl., P. Pl., A. I. 94. And take trespassours and teiȝen hem faste.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), VII. 117. Or þe whiche statut þe firste trespasour was þe erle.
1450–1530. Myrr. our Ladye, 75. And forgyue vs oure trespasses, as we forgyue oure trespassoures.
1535. Coverdale, Josh. vii., heading. The trespacer is stoned vnto death.
1648. Petit. East. Assoc., 26. We see no reason, why … our Trespassers be our Judges.
1742. J. Glas, Lord’s Supper, V. vi. 234. The Trespasser humbles himself to confess his Fault.
2. Law. One who commits a trespass; esp. one who trespasses on the lands of another.
c. 1455. Forest Lawis, c. 22, in Acts Parl. Scot. (1844), I. 692. Item gif ony wylde best be fundyn dede or wondyt and þe trespassour be nocht fundyn, at þe next mut þar aw to be inquisicioun made.
1590. Swinburne, Testaments, 237. Whosoeuer as a meere trespasser, entereth into the goods of the testator.
1651. G. W., trans. Cowel’s Inst., 23. The party following them [stray beasts], and endeavouring to keep them from committing Damages, is no Trespasser.
1700. Tyrrell, Hist. Eng., II. 1108. Concerning Trespassers in Parks.
1837. Dickens, Pickw., xix. Remind me to have a board done about trespassers, and spring guns, and all that sort of thing, to keep the common people out.
1895. Pollock & Maitland, Hist. Eng. Law, II. 166. The man who has bought or hired goods from a trespasser, how has he broken the king’s peace and why should he be sent to gaol?
fig. 1702. North, Lett., 6 Dec., in Lives (1890), III. App. 247. If I am too much a trespasser on your better time.
† 3. Rhet. lit. ‘That which oversteps or passes beyond’; hyperbaton. Obs. rare–1.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, III. xii. (Arb.), 180. To all their speaches which wrought by disorder the Greekes gaue a general name (Hiperbaton) as much to say as the (trespasser).
