Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "going." Used in medieval legal texts to describe movement or passage, particularly in the context of rights of way, easements, or conditions involving the physical traversal of land or property. The term appears in Littleton's Tenures and related early common law sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering ALANT in primary sources are almost certainly working with medieval or early modern English legal texts — most likely Littleton's Tenures or commentary derived from it. The term is a Law French relic and will not appear in modern legal instruments or judicial opinions. Its sole practical research value is as a reading aid when parsing early manuscript sources or printed editions of Littleton and Coke upon Littleton.
The key navigational point: ALANT functions as a participial or gerundive form (from aler, to go), not as a standalone substantive legal concept. It describes a physical act — going — rather than naming a right or doctrine. Researchers who encounter it should focus on the surrounding context: what is going, who is going, and under what conditions. The legal significance lies in the surrounding doctrine, not in ALANT itself.
Corpus researchers should also note that Law French orthography is highly variable across manuscripts and printed editions. Variant spellings may appear without standardization. If searching a digitized corpus, consider searching for root forms or neighboring terms rather than relying on exact-match queries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only shelf-source entry for this term, defining it simply as "Going" and tracing it to Law French aler with a direct citation to Littleton's Tenures, section 240. Burrill's treatment is minimal — a one-line gloss — appropriate for a term that functions grammatically rather than doctrinally. No other historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus appear to have treated ALANT as a standalone entry, which itself signals the term's narrow scope. The absence of extended treatment in sources like Jacob's Law Dictionary or Tomlin's New Law Dictionary suggests the term was understood by legal readers of those periods without elaboration.
Jurisdictional Note
ALANT is purely a term of early English law. It has no independent existence in American, Scottish, or civil law traditions. Any researcher encountering it outside of English common law sources should treat the appearance as anomalous and verify the source's provenance.