Definition
An archaic Law French verb meaning to abut — that is, to border upon, adjoin, or terminate at a boundary. Used in early English legal pleading and conveyancing to describe the physical relationship between a parcel of land and a neighboring property, road, or landmark. The term appears in property descriptions to fix the limits of land by reference to what it touches or terminates against.
Common Language
This is pure legal and historical jargon with no meaningful common counterpart in modern English usage. The verb "to abut" survives in ordinary English, but ABBUTTRE itself does not. See the entry for ABUT for the living form of this concept.
Common Confusion
ABBUTTRE should not be confused with ABUTTALS or ABUTTMENT, though all derive from the same root concept. ABBUTTRE is the Law French verbal form appearing in medieval pleading records; ABUTTALS refers to the boundary descriptions themselves as a noun; ABUTTMENT (or ABUTMENT) in modern usage refers primarily to a structural support at the end of a bridge or arch. A researcher encountering ABBUTTRE in a Year Book or early plea roll should understand it as the operative verb in a boundary clause, not as a standalone noun describing the boundary line itself.
Why It Matters in Research
ABBUTTRE is a paleographic and linguistic marker more than a living legal concept. Its significance in research is almost entirely historical and navigational:
Researchers working with Year Books, early plea rolls, or medieval conveyancing records will encounter this term in property descriptions where land is being located by reference to its neighbors. The phrase preserved in Burrill — abbuttant et adjoynant al haut estret ("abutting and adjoining the highway") — is a formulaic construction typical of Law French pleading, and recognizing ABBUTTRE as a boundary verb prevents misreading of the surrounding property description.
The term effectively disappears from legal usage as Law French yields to English in pleading during the seventeenth century. After that transition, "abut," "abutting," and "abuttal" carry the concept forward in fully anglicized form. Any search for boundary language in post-1650 sources should use those English forms rather than the Law French variant.
Because ABBUTTRE appears in formulaic phrases, it tends to cluster with companion terms — adjoynant (adjoining), al haut estret (the highway), and similar locative expressions. Researchers doing corpus searches on property descriptions in Law French materials should treat these terms as a cluster rather than searching each in isolation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole entry in the Law Mind shelf corpus. Burrill gives the definition economically: "to abut," with the illustrative phrase from the Year Books (Pasch. 11 Hen. VI, fo. 2) as the only authority. The entry is notable for what it does not contain — no extended definition, no doctrinal elaboration — because the term carried no independent legal doctrine. It was a pleading word, doing the work of spatial orientation in a property description, not a term of art generating substantive legal consequences.
Other major historical dictionaries — Jacob, Tomlin, Bouvier — do not carry a separate entry for ABBUTTRE, treating the concept entirely under ABUT or ABUTTALS. This is consistent with the term's status as an inflected Law French form rather than an independent legal concept. The omission is not a gap in those dictionaries; it reflects that by their periods of composition, the Law French verbal form had already been absorbed into its English equivalents.
Jurisdictional Note
ABBUTTRE is specific to the English common law tradition and its Law French pleading heritage. It has no independent existence in American, Scottish, or civilian legal sources. American researchers will encounter boundary language exclusively in its anglicized forms.