approvement

From approve +‎ -ment.

approvement (countable and uncountable, plural approvements)

1. (obsolete, Old English law) Improvement of common lands by converting them for advantage of the landlord.
2. (archaic) Approval; approbation.
   • a. 1628 (date written), John Hayward, The Life, and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt, London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press, and J. Lichfield at Oxford?] for Iohn Partridge, […], published 1630, →OCLC:

     I did nothing without your approvement.

3. (UK, law, obsolete) A confession of guilt by a prisoner charged with treason or felony, together with an accusation or implication against the accomplices and a giving evidence against them in order to obtain his own pardon.
   • 1861, John Henry Willan, A Manual of the Criminal Law of Canada, page 7:

     The whole learning of approvements (i. e. trial by the evidence of an approver) is now obsolete being superseded by the modern practice of allowing an accused person to turn evidence for the Queen without confessing the indictment.

• “approvement”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.