Definition
Aliment operates as both a noun and a verb across several legal traditions, with meaning varying by jurisdiction and legal system.
1. (Scots law, noun) A legal obligation of maintenance and support — the fund, allowance, or provision made for the sustenance of a person who cannot support themselves. The term encompasses support owed between spouses, between parents and children, and reciprocally between family members. Specifically applied to an allowance drawn from a husband's estate for the maintenance of his wife.
2. (Scots law, verb) To maintain or support; to furnish another with the necessaries of life. Parents and children are said to be mutually bound to aliment one another.
3. (Civil law, noun) Food and other necessaries required for the support of life; by extension, money awarded or set aside for the purpose of procuring those necessaries.
4. (Common law, verb, archaic) To supply with necessaries; to maintain.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Food; nourishment; sustenance; an allowance for maintenance; alimony.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): That which nourishes; food; nutriment; anything which feeds or supports natural growth; the necessaries of life generally; sustenance; means of support. Also, an allowance for maintenance (noted as a Scottish usage).
The gap is subtle but important: in ordinary English, aliment has largely collapsed into a synonym for food or nourishment. In legal contexts — particularly Scots and civil law — aliment refers not to food itself but to the legal right and obligation to receive or furnish maintenance. A researcher who reads the common meaning into a legal document will miss the enforceable duty that the term carries.
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Common Confusion
Aliment and alimony share a root and are sometimes used interchangeably in older texts, including by Burrill. They are not identical. Alimony in modern usage is almost exclusively the post-separation or post-divorce allowance paid from one spouse to another under common-law and American statutory frameworks. Aliment, by contrast, is the broader Scots and civil-law concept of maintenance owed among family members generally — not limited to spouses, not limited to divorce, and potentially reciprocal. In historical sources, the conflation is common enough that a researcher encountering either term in a pre-20th-century Scottish or mixed-jurisdiction document should not assume the modern American meaning of alimony applies.
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Why It Matters in Research
Aliment is primarily a term of Scots law and civilian tradition, and its presence in a document is often itself a jurisdictional signal. Researchers working in English common-law sources before the 19th century will encounter it rarely; when it does appear (as in the equity citation at 3 Edw. Ch. 194 noted by Bouvier), it is typically borrowed from Scots or civil-law usage rather than representing an independent common-law doctrine.
Two traps in historical sources deserve attention. First, older dictionaries — including Burrill — note that aliment is "sometimes called alimony," which can create false equivalence when tracing doctrine across jurisdictions. The two concepts developed differently, and the obligations each imposed on family members beyond spouses diverge substantially. Second, the reciprocal nature of the aliment obligation in Scots law (children owe aliment to parents; parents to children) has no direct American common-law counterpart and should not be assumed when reading the term in a transatlantic context.
For researchers using the Law Mind corpus: aliment appears in Scots legal materials, institutional writers, and civil-law sources. Cross-reference with alimony entries carefully, and pay attention to whether the source is drawing on Paterson's Compendium (Scots institutional authority) or on English equity practice.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries present consistent core meanings with modest differences in emphasis. Black's (both editions) restricts the entry to Scots law, treating aliment as both the verb "to maintain" and the noun "an allowance from the husband's estate for the support of the wife." This framing is somewhat narrower than the actual Scots doctrine, which extends the obligation across multiple family relationships.
Bouvier is the most complete of the four. He distinguishes three legal traditions — Scots law, civil law, and common law — and supplies different source authorities for each. His civil-law entry refers to the Digest (Dig. 50.16.43), which addresses aliments broadly as food and necessaries. His common-law entry cites 3 Edw. Ch. 194, suggesting equity courts recognized a cognate concept, though this usage remained peripheral to English common-law doctrine.
Burrill adds the useful observation that aliment is "sometimes called alimony" and emphasizes the reciprocal character of the obligation under Scots law — a point the Black's editions omit. His reference to Bell's Dictionary of the Law of Scotland is the appropriate institutional source for researchers needing to trace the term's native Scots development.
None of the historical dictionaries fully addresses the procedural and remedial dimensions of aliment under Scots law — the mechanisms for claiming, enforcing, or varying an aliment obligation — which require consultation of Scots institutional writers beyond dictionary scope.
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Jurisdictional Note
Aliment as a legal term of art remains active in Scots law, codified and developed through Scots statute and case law well into the modern period. In American and English common-law jurisdictions, the term is effectively obsolete as a term of art, having been displaced entirely by alimony and maintenance. Civil-law jurisdictions (France, Louisiana, Quebec, and others) retain cognate concepts under various names derived from the same Latin root.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Family Law (spousal and parental support obligations); Scots Law (institutional framework and civilian influence); Civil Law Obligations (alimentary duties in the civilian tradition).
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