Definition
A unit of dry measure used in early English and Saxon law. The ambra (also spelled ambra) denoted a fixed quantity of dry goods — most commonly grain — with the capacity understood in later sources as equivalent to four bushels. The term appears in Anglo-Saxon legal texts and persisted into early medieval English usage before falling out of practical application.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No current entry. The term has no surviving presence in modern English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The word had already passed out of general use well before the nineteenth century.
The term is purely historical and carries no meaning in modern lay speech. Researchers encountering it should treat it as an archaic unit of measurement rather than a word with any surviving common or legal sense.
Common Confusion
Ambra should not be confused with amber (the fossilized resin), with which it shares a partial Saxon root. Burrill notes the Saxon ancestor of the word — amber — as a vessel or measure, but the legal term ambra refers exclusively to a unit of capacity, not to the substance amber. The etymological overlap has occasionally caused misreading in transcriptions of early legal manuscripts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with Anglo-Saxon law texts, Domesday-era documents, or early medieval English land and grain records will encounter ambra as a measure of agricultural produce, rents in kind, or customary dues. The critical research problem is that the actual capacity of the ambra was not standardized across all sources. Burrill is explicit that the capacity is now unknown, while Black's second edition supplies the four-bushel equivalence — a figure drawn from later medieval English usage. These two statements are not necessarily contradictory: the four-bushel figure may reflect the measure as it was eventually fixed, while Burrill's caution reflects uncertainty about whether that figure applied uniformly in the earliest Saxon period.
When reading conveyances, custumals, or grain-render records from the Anglo-Saxon or early Norman period, do not assume the four-bushel equivalence without corroboration from the specific document's context or region. Measures of this kind varied locally and changed across time. The ambra belongs to the same family of archaic capacity terms — including the bushel, seam, and coomb — that require careful contextual calibration in historical legal research.
The term has no living legal significance. It will not appear in modern statutes, regulations, or case law. Its relevance is confined entirely to the interpretation of historical documents.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill traces the word to the Saxon amber and the Latin amphora, identifying it as a vessel or kind of measure appearing in the Laws of Ine (a West Saxon law code traditionally dated to the late seventh century), citing the manuscript version at chapter 67, with reference to Spelman. Burrill candidly acknowledges that the original capacity is now unknown — a notable admission of the limits of the historical record.
Black's second edition is more definitive, identifying ambra as an old English law measure of four bushels, without qualification. Black does not cite a specific source for the four-bushel figure, which is a point of modest tension with Burrill's caution. Neither dictionary places the term in a broader comparative context alongside related Saxon and Norman measures.
Both sources agree on the basic character of the term: a historical dry measure of English law, no longer in use. The divergence lies only in the precision of the capacity figure. Researchers relying on Black's four-bushel equivalence for documentary interpretation should note that Burrill's earlier caution has not been fully resolved in the secondary literature.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to English legal history and has no equivalent use in Scots, Irish, or continental legal sources under this name. It carries no jurisdictional relevance outside early English law.