Definition
A term appearing in old Scots law with two distinct, unrelated meanings depending on context and source:
1. (Noun form) An archaic variant spelling of "average," referring to the feudal service obligation of tenants to their superiors, particularly duties involving the use of horses or other draft animals for carrying or transport. In this sense, arage is interchangeable with "arrage" and "average" in the feudal tenure context.
2. (Adjective/noun form, from Scots Gaelic via Norman French) Mad; insane. "Arages" denotes madmen or persons of unsound mind. Recorded by Skene in his work on Scottish legal terminology and noted by Kelham in his glossary of Norman French legal terms.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To enrage; to make angry.
Historical common usage: Not separately recorded in Webster's 1913 in this form.
Editorial note: The common modern reading of "arage" as a variant of "enrage" bears no connection to either legal sense. A researcher encountering the term in a Scots law manuscript should not interpret it through the lens of the modern verb. Context — whether the passage concerns feudal obligations or legal capacity — is the essential disambiguating factor.
Common Confusion
The two legal senses of "arage" are themselves easily conflated because they appear in the same body of old Scots law sources and are spelled nearly identically to related terms. The tenure-service meaning aligns with "arrage," "arriage," and "average" (in its feudal sense). The mental incapacity meaning aligns with "arages" (plural) and connects to the Scots law treatment of legal incompetents. Neither sense has any relation to the modern English word "enrage." Additionally, "average" as a feudal service term is entirely unrelated to the maritime or commercial meaning of "average" familiar to modern readers — a further trap for researchers working across subject areas.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a low-frequency archaism that surfaces almost exclusively in pre-Union Scots law materials and glossaries of Norman French legal vocabulary. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should treat it as a signal term — its presence in a document is a strong indicator that the surrounding text dates from the medieval or early modern Scots legal period and is likely addressing either feudal tenure arrangements or the legal status of persons with mental incapacity.
The two meanings demand immediate contextual disambiguation before any further research proceeds. Misreading the mental incapacity sense as a tenure term (or vice versa) would produce a fundamentally incorrect interpretation of the underlying legal status or obligation being described.
Cross-referencing to "arrage," "arriage," and the feudal-service sense of "average" is essential when pursuing the tenure meaning. Cross-referencing to Scots law treatment of legal capacity, curatory, and the status of "fatuous persons" is necessary when the insanity meaning is in play.
Burrill is one of the very few English-language legal dictionaries to record this term at all. Researchers who encounter "arage" in a primary source and consult only modern legal dictionaries are unlikely to find it, which can create a false impression that the term is an error or variant spelling of no legal significance.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only substantive entry in the Law Mind shelf sources. Burrill records both senses — the feudal-average sense and the madness sense — and credits Skene's work on Scottish legal French (Skene, De Verborum Significatione) for the insanity meaning, and Kelham's dictionary of Norman French for "arages" as madmen. This dual sourcing reflects the genuine dual origin of the term: one thread running through Scots feudal tenure law, the other through Norman French legal vocabulary that shaped early Scots jurisprudence.
No synthesis across multiple historical dictionaries is possible here because this term does not appear to have been independently treated outside Burrill and the sources he cites. The absence of the term from major English common law dictionaries (Tomlin, Bouvier, Black's early editions) confirms that "arage" is a Scots law and Norman French specialist term without meaningful reception in the English common law tradition.
Jurisdictional Note
Scots law exclusively. This term has no recorded use in English common law, Irish law, or American law. Researchers working in English or American legal history have no occasion to encounter it in native sources; it appears in the Anglo-American tradition only through comparative or glossary works treating Scots and Norman French legal vocabulary.