Definition
A Latin term of medieval legal Latin (Law Latin), used in Saxon law to mean to detest and avoid. The term appears in historical English legal records describing a formal act of rejection or avoidance — the deliberate distancing of oneself from a person, obligation, or thing with an element of expressed repudiation.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is of narrow historical significance and will appear almost exclusively in sources dealing with Anglo-Saxon or early Norman-period English law. Researchers encountering it in primary sources or older secondary digests should treat it as a term of art specific to that era's legal vocabulary rather than as a term carrying continuous common-law development. It does not appear to have survived into modern legal usage in any jurisdictional doctrine.
The practical risk for corpus researchers is misreading the term as merely informal or colloquial expression when it carried a specific legal weight in its Saxon-law context — the act of avoidance could have procedural or social-legal consequences in early English legal order. Do not conflate with broader equitable concepts of avoidance that developed later in English law under different vocabulary.
Burrill's entry is thin, tracing the definition solely to Cowell's legal lexicon (John Cowell, The Interpreter, first published 1607). That lineage means the definition passed through at least one intermediary compiler before reaching Burrill, and researchers working with primary Saxon-era sources should be cautious about treating Cowell's gloss as a direct transcript of the term's original operative meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only dictionary source available here, and the entry is brief: "L. Lat. In Saxon law. To detest and avoid. Cowell." This entry is essentially a pass-through from John Cowell's The Interpreter, making Cowell the effective primary lexicographic source for the term. Burrill adds no elaboration beyond attribution.
The brevity reflects the term's narrow functional scope. It was not a foundational concept of the common law and did not generate the doctrinal commentary that would produce richer lexicographic treatment. Researchers should not expect further elaboration in standard common-law dictionaries of the 18th or 19th centuries; the term belongs to a distinct, earlier stratum of English legal history that most later compilers did not revisit in depth.
No meaningful divergence among historical sources can be assessed here, as only one source is available. The entry should be treated as a data point about the vocabulary of Saxon legal custom rather than a term with living doctrinal content.
Jurisdictional Note
Relevant only to historical English law of the Saxon period. The term has no recognized application in modern English, American, or Commonwealth jurisdictions.