Definition
A Law French term used in old English law meaning to lead, to lead away, or to take away. The term appears in medieval legal records and year books in contexts involving the physical leading or removal of animals — most commonly in cases of theft or trespass involving livestock or hounds. Its operative sense shifted slightly depending on context: to lead (as an animal on a leash), to lead away (as stolen cattle removed from their rightful owner's possession), or more broadly to take away or remove.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): French verb meaning "to bring" or "to lead (someone or something) to a place."
Historical common usage: Not separately treated in Webster's 1913 as an English entry; the term is a borrowing from Old French into the legal vocabulary of Norman England.
Editorial note: The modern French sense of amener — to bring something toward a destination — is subtly but meaningfully different from the dominant legal sense in old English law, which emphasized removal or leading away from a location. The legal usage carries a directional implication of departure rather than arrival, which matters when reading medieval pleadings and year book entries.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal records, particularly year books and early plea rolls from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, will encounter amener as a term of act — describing what a defendant or wrongdoer physically did with an animal. The word surfaces in trespass and larceny contexts where proof of taking required showing that the animal was led away rather than simply found or held. The distinction between mere possession and the act of leading away could bear on whether the offense was characterized as theft or a lesser wrong.
The term belongs to the Law French stratum of English legal vocabulary, a layer that persists well into the early modern period in legal records but largely disappears from pleading after Law French was officially displaced in English courts. Researchers who encounter amener in a source must read it against its immediate context: leading on a leash (as in the year book example involving greyhounds) signals something different from leading away stolen cattle. Burrill's gloss collapses these into a single entry, but the distinctions were operative in practice.
There are no modern statutory or common law uses of this term. Its research value is purely archival and historical.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term. Burrill treats it economically, offering three graduated meanings — to lead, to lead away, and to take away or remove — supported by two distinct authorities: a Year Book passage from Michaelmas term, 18 Henry VI (illustrating the leading-on-a-leash sense with greyhounds), and a citation to Britton, the thirteenth-century French-language treatise on English law, for the stolen-animal sense.
No other major historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — not Jacob's Law Dictionary, not Tomlin's, not Black's early editions — appear to give amener a dedicated entry, reflecting the term's narrow archival scope. Researchers should treat Burrill's entry as the practical ceiling of dictionary support and look to the primary sources Burrill cites — the Year Books and Britton — for fuller context.