Emily Dickinson Lexicon

COM'MON, n.

1. A tract of ground, the use of which is not appropriated to an individual, but belongs to the public or to a number. Thus we apply the word to an open ground or space in a highway, reserved for public use.
2. In law, an open ground, or that soil the use of which belongs equally to the inhabitants of a town or of a lordship, or to a certain number of proprietors; or the profit which a man has in the land of another; or a right which a person has to pasture his cattle on land of another, or to dig turf, or catch fish, or cut wood, or the like; called common of pasture, of turbary, of piscary, and of estovers. Common, or right of common, is appendant, appurtenant, because of vicinage, or in gross. Common appendant is a right belonging to the owners or occupiers of arable land to put commonable beasts upon the lord's waste, and upon the lands of other persons within the same manor. This is a matter of most universal right. Common appurtenant may be annexed to lands in other lordships, or extend to other beasts, besides those which are generally commonable; this is not of common right, but can be claimed only by immemorial usage and prescription. Common because of vicinage or neighborhood, is where the inhabitants of two townships, lying contiguous to each other, have usually intercommoned with one another, the beasts of the one straying into the other's fields; this is a permissive right. Common in gross or at large, is annexed to a man's person, being granted to him and his heirs by deed; or it may be claimed by prescriptive right, as by a parson of a church or other corporation sole. – Blackstone.