Definition
ABJ is an abbreviated Latin prefix or particle appearing in early English legal records and law dictionaries, typically as a fragment of Latin legal compound terms rather than as a freestanding legal term with independent meaning. In the context of Burrill's Law Dictionary, the entry appears as an incomplete or truncated headword associated with Latin phrases meaning "to stand to" or "from thence," suggesting the fragment derives from terms such as *abjurare* (to abjure, to renounce on oath) or similar Latin compounds used in pleading and ecclesiastical procedure. Without a complete headword, ABJ is best understood as a catalog artifact — a partial entry preserved in the printed dictionary that points toward a family of Latin legal terms rather than defining a discrete legal concept.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering ABJ in Burrill's or in early legal manuscripts should treat it as an index fragment rather than a standalone term. Burrill's Law Dictionary, like many nineteenth-century compilations, organized Latin abbreviations and prefixes in ways that can appear as independent entries when they are in fact leading characters of longer headwords (such as ABJURATION or ABJURE). The surrounding text in Burrill — referencing a forged deed, the citation to 2 Mod. 27, and the cross-reference to Bell's Dictionary — suggests the original typeset entry may have run together fragments from adjacent headwords, a common artifact of period legal dictionaries compiled from manuscript and earlier print sources.
If you are searching the Law Mind corpus for this string, run broader searches on ABJURE, ABJURATION, and ABJURARE before concluding the term has independent legal significance. Entries immediately surrounding ABJ in Burrill (including ABISHERSING) are drawn from Old English and early common law vocabulary, so contextual proximity does not reliably indicate subject matter relationship.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source dictionary for this entry. The text preserved under ABJ is fragmentary and almost certainly represents a printing or transcription artifact rather than a substantive headword. The surrounding passage — "to stand to the consequences of founding law. From thence. 2 Mod. 27. 6 Id. on a forged deed. Bell's Dict. 252." — reads as orphaned text from a neighboring entry, consistent with the typographic conventions of nineteenth-century legal dictionaries where running entries were sometimes split across pages or columns without clean separation.
Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland (cross-referenced in Burrill) is a legitimate source; the page citation 252 is plausible for a Bell's entry, though researchers should verify against a physical copy before relying on it. The Mod. citations (Modern Reports) are genuine English law report series, but without the full surrounding headword it is impossible to confirm what proposition they were cited to support.
No other historical law dictionaries in the standard research shelf — Black's, Bouvier's, Wharton's, or Jacob's — carry ABJ as a freestanding entry, which reinforces the conclusion that this is a fragment rather than a recognized legal term.