ABUT. To reach, to touch.
In old law, the ends were said to abut, the sides to adjoin. Cro. Jac. 184.
To take a new direction ; as where a bounding line changes its course. Spelman, Gloss. Abuttare. In the modern law, to bound upon. 2 Chit. Pl. 660.
In Hughes v. R. Co., 130 N. Y. 14, 28 N. E. 765, an abutting lot was defined as a lot bounded on the side of a public street in the bed or soil of which the owner of the lot has no title, estate; interest, or private right ex cept such as are incident to a lot so situated. And see Abendroth v. R. Co., 122 N. Y. 1, 25 N. E. 496, 11 L. R. A. 634, 19 Am. St. Rep. 461. Though the usual meaning of the word is that the things spoken of do actually ad join, "bounding and abutting" have no such inflexible meaning as to require lots assess ed or improved actually to touch the im provement ; Cohen v. Cleveland, 43 Ohio St. 190, 1 N. E. 589 ; 1 Ex. D. 336 ; contra, Holt v. City Council, 127 Mass. 408.
Bounding or abutting on a street will in clude the soil of a private road opening into the street ; 7 Q. B. 183. Where a strip of ground from one side of a street is appro priated for the purpose of widening such street, the lots fronting on the opposite sides of the street at the part widened will be deemed to abut on the improvement, though the street intervenes between the abutting lots and the strip appropriated ; Cincinnati v. Batsche, 52 Ohio St. 324, 40 N. E. 21, 27 L. R. A. 536; and where a sidewalk interven ed between the street improvement and lots bounding on the sidewalk, such lots were subject, as "contiguous" to the proposed im provement, to special taxation to defray the expense of the latter ; Chicago, B. & Q. P.. Co. v. City of Quincy, 136 Ill. 563, 27 N. E. 192, 29 Am. St. Rep. 334.