Definition
To erase, deface, or obliterate a writing or instrument. In Law French legal usage, *arace* denotes the act of defacing a document — scratching out, erasing, or otherwise rendering a written record illegible or invalid. The related form *aracher* (also *aracer*) extends the metaphor further, meaning to root up or pull out by the roots, and was applied both literally and figuratively to the destruction or removal of written text or legal instruments.
The term appears principally in medieval Anglo-Norman legal records and in glossaries of Law French vocabulary. It has no operative function in modern legal practice and is encountered today only in historical documents, pleadings, or treatises composed in or drawing upon the Law French tradition.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To tear up by the roots; to draw away. Marked obsolete.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To tear up by the roots; to draw away. Cited as obsolete, with reference to Wyatt.
The common and legal meanings share the same root metaphor — uprooting, pulling away — but the legal application narrows this to the specific act of defacing or obliterating a written instrument. Where ordinary usage evokes a physical, agricultural image, the legal usage is documentary: the concern is with the integrity of writings, records, and legal text.
Common Confusion
*Arace* and *aracher/aracer* are closely related but technically distinct in Burrill's treatment. *Arace* is glossed as to erase or deface; *aracher* carries the stronger sense of rooting up or pulling out entirely. In practice, historical sources may use these interchangeably, and researchers should not assume a consistent technical distinction between the two forms across different documents or periods.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal records, Year Books, or early common law pleadings written in Law French will encounter *arace* and its variants in contexts involving the alteration or destruction of documents. The relevance is primarily evidentiary and transactional: accusations that a charter, deed, or court record had been *araced* — defaced or erased — bore directly on the authenticity and legal force of the instrument in question.
The term connects to the broader Law French vocabulary of documentary integrity, alongside terms like *rasure* (erasure) and *interlineation*. Researchers should be alert to variant spellings across manuscript sources; Law French orthography was inconsistent, and the same act might be described with slight differences in form depending on the scribe, period, or regional tradition.
Because *arace* is purely historical, it will not appear in modern statutory codes, regulations, or case reporters. Searches in historical legal databases, digitized Year Books, or early English chancery records are the appropriate venues. Burrill is currently the primary English-language legal dictionary to gloss the term directly; other historical dictionaries treat it only incidentally, if at all.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal source for this entry, drawing on Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) for both *arace* and the related *aracher/aracer*. Burrill's treatment is brief but precise, offering the two distinct glosses — to erase or deface (*arace*) and to root up or pull out (*aracher*) — and correctly attributing both to the Law French tradition rather than to classical Latin.
Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary record the ordinary English survival of the same root, marking it obsolete, but neither source addresses the legal application. No other major historical legal dictionary in the standard English-language shelf — not Black's, not Bouvier's, not Jacob's — gives *arace* a dedicated entry, making Burrill the essential reference for any researcher who encounters this term in a primary source.