Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning to relieve, ease, or redress. It appears in early legal texts as a verb denoting the act of providing relief or remedy, and in its participial form *alegge*, meaning relieved, eased, or redressed. The term has no continuing presence in modern legal usage and is encountered almost exclusively in medieval and early common law sources.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in current standard use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Gay; cheerful; sprightly. [Obs.]"
The ordinary English word *aleger* — meaning light-spirited or cheerful — and the Law French legal term are false cognates sharing a spelling but bearing no relationship in meaning or derivation. A researcher encountering *aleger* in a historical legal document should not import any sense of the common English word. The legal term belongs to the vocabulary of remedy and relief; the common English word belongs to the vocabulary of disposition and mood.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a marker of Law French provenance. Researchers working with plea rolls, early Year Books, or any source predating the gradual displacement of Law French from English legal records (roughly through the 17th century) may encounter *aleger* or its participial form *alegge* in contexts describing the grant of relief or the redress of a wrong. The key navigational point is that the term functions in the semantic field of remedy — understanding it as a near-equivalent to *relieve* or *redress* will correctly orient the researcher within the surrounding legal context.
Because *aleger* is not carried forward into modern legal vocabulary, it will not appear in American or post-18th-century English legal sources except as a historical reference. Researchers should treat it as a terminal vocabulary item: useful for decoding older texts but requiring no forward-looking cross-referencing into contemporary doctrine.
The connection to Kelham's glossary (cited by Burrill) is the primary scholarly anchor. Researchers needing fuller Law French vocabulary support should consult Kelham's *Norman-French Dictionary* directly, as it remains the standard reference for this stratum of legal language.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is brief but precise, drawing on Kelham's Norman-French glossary. The entry gives both the verbal and participial forms and correctly situates the term in the vocabulary of legal relief. No other major historical legal dictionaries in the standard shelf — not Jacob's *Law Dictionary*, not Bouvier, not Black's early editions — appear to carry this term, which reflects its narrow historical window of use and the completeness of its disappearance from living legal language by the time those works were compiled. Burrill's inclusion of it is a mark of his broader philological ambition in treating Law French source vocabulary, and researchers using Burrill for Law French terms should bear in mind that coverage of this stratum is uneven across the historical dictionary shelf. Webster's 1913 definition, while technically preserving an archaic English sense, is legally irrelevant and potentially misleading.