Definition
A la is a French phrase meaning "in the style or manner of," used in older legal texts and marine law contexts. In its primary legal application, the term appears in French marine law as a compact expression for a contract of bottomry — a form of maritime loan in which a vessel (or its cargo) is pledged as security, with repayment contingent on the ship's safe arrival. The phrase functioned as shorthand in historical legal writing, typically introducing a reference to the governing custom or legal regime under which a transaction was conducted.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "In the style or manner of."
Historical common usage: The phrase was not separately defined in Webster's 1913 as a legal term; it appears as ordinary French-derived English indicating resemblance to a particular style, method, or person.
Editorial note: In everyday English, a la is purely descriptive and informal ("prepared a la the French style"). In historical legal sources, particularly French marine law, the phrase carries technical weight as a marker of a specific contractual form — bottomry — and signals that the instrument or transaction is governed by that body of law and custom. A researcher encountering a la in a legal document should not assume the phrase is merely decorative.
Why It Matters in Research
The phrase will almost never appear as a standalone headword in primary legal sources. Researchers are most likely to encounter it embedded in translated French marine law documents, historical shipping contracts, or commentary on admiralty practice. When Bouvier flags a la as synonymous with bottomry, he is pointing researchers toward a distinct body of law — one with its own customs, terminology, and jurisdictional rules — rather than offering a general linguistic gloss.
Two research traps are worth flagging. First, the phrase's casual appearance in older texts can cause a researcher to read past it as a mere stylistic flourish, missing the signal that a specific contractual form is being invoked. Second, because bottomry contracts were governed by different rules depending on the port, the nationality of the vessel, and the applicable maritime code, a la in a French marine document does not carry identical legal content to a bottomry bond drafted under English admiralty practice. Jurisdictional context is essential.
Corpus researchers should use a la as a finding aid: its presence in a historical marine law document is a reliable indicator that bottomry-related provisions follow, and the entry should be read alongside the full bottomry framework rather than in isolation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the sole historical dictionary source here, and its treatment is minimal — a single line directing readers to bottomry and citing Burrill's Law Dictionary. This brevity is itself informative: a la was not considered a term of art requiring independent elaboration but rather a French-language pointer to an established legal concept. Bouvier does not define the contractual mechanics of bottomry under this entry; those details are reserved for the bottomry headword itself.
No divergence among historical sources can be assessed given the single-source record. The absence of the phrase from English-language legal dictionaries of the same era (such as Black's early editions) confirms that a la was understood as a French-law term, relevant primarily to practitioners and scholars working with Continental or civil law maritime sources.
Jurisdictional Note
A la in its legal sense is a creature of French civil and marine law. English admiralty practice used the term "bottomry bond" for the same instrument. Researchers working with mixed-jurisdiction shipping disputes or international cargo records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may encounter both formulations referring to the same underlying transaction.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — BOTTOMRY for the full contractual framework, legal mechanics, and historical treatment of the maritime loan instrument to which a la refers.