Art. 5053.Words and Phrases

Much of the Code's precision rests on ordinary language rather than defined legal terms. Article 5053 tells courts to read words and phrases in context, giving them the common and approved meaning they carry in everyday usage, unless something elsewhere in the Code assigns a different, specialized meaning to a particular term.

That qualification matters. Where a word or phrase is left undefined, Article 5053's common-usage rule fills the gap. Where the Code does define a term, that definition controls instead, which is why the closing article of the entire Code, Article 5251, gathers a set of specific definitions for words and terms that recur throughout the Code and need a fixed, uniform meaning rather than an ordinary-usage one.

Article 5053 also settles a distinction that appears throughout every Book already published on this site: "shall" is mandatory, and "may" is permissive. Whenever an article of the Code says a court, a clerk, a sheriff, or a party "shall" do something, that language imposes a duty, not an option. When it says a person "may" act, the choice belongs to that person. Getting this distinction right shapes how nearly every other article in the Code gets applied.