Definition
A Law French term meaning "learned" or "versed in." Used in early English legal records and Year Books to describe a person's familiarity with the law or to introduce a statement of established legal principle. The phrase *apris de la leie* means "learned in the law" and was used in pleading and judicial discourse to signal that what follows is understood to be a settled rule or maxim, not a contested proposition.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not present as an English entry. The term is obsolete French.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The term did not survive into modern English in any form.
The word derives from the Law French *apprendre* (to learn) and is cognate with the modern French *appris* (learned, taught). It appears in English legal sources solely as a term of art embedded in Law French pleading formulae and Year Book discourse. Researchers encountering it outside a legal manuscript context should treat it as a borrowing from the law courts, not ordinary French usage.
Why It Matters in Research
*Apris* is a navigational marker, not a substantive legal concept. When a Year Book passage or early plea roll uses this word, the author is signaling one of two things: either that the speaker has been educated in the law (a credential claim), or that the proposition about to be stated has the character of a maxim or received principle rather than a novel argument.
Researchers working in Year Book sources from the Lancastrian period — particularly the reign of Henry VI — will encounter this term in formulaic framing phrases. The Burrill citation to Yearb. M. 2 Hen. VI. 1 is the anchoring instance. The surrounding phrase, *j'ay apris pur ley et pur un principle et maxime en nostre ley*, functions as something like "I put it to you as settled law that…" — a rhetorical move designed to foreclose dispute on a foundational point.
The chief research trap is treating *apris* as substantively significant when it is structurally introductory. What matters is the principle or maxim that follows, not the word itself. Researchers cataloguing Year Book arguments should index *apris* passages under the substantive principle introduced, not under credentialing language.
Because Law French was already in decline by the mid-fifteenth century, later legal dictionaries and abridgments largely drop this term. Its absence from Cowell, Blount, and Jacob is therefore expected and should not suggest the term lacked currency in its own period. Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (cited by Burrill) is the most useful secondary source for resolving variant spellings, which include *apris*, *appris*, and occasionally *appres* in manuscript hands.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the sole historical legal dictionary source available for this entry, and his treatment is appropriately brief. He supplies the definition ("learned"), the standard phrase (*apris de la leie*), the Year Book citation, and the Kelham reference. This is adequate for a function word of limited independent doctrinal significance.
No divergence among sources to report, as this term does not appear in competing historical law dictionaries with conflicting definitions. The meaning is stable and uncontested across the sources that do address it.