Definition
A Latin maxim of medieval English law meaning "to give arms" or "to dub a knight" — that is, to confer knighthood upon a person through the formal ceremony of arming. The phrase captures the ritual act by which a lord or sovereign invested a man with the arms and status of a knight, marking his entry into the military nobility.
The associated maxim *Arma in armatos sumere jura sinunt* — "the laws permit the taking up of arms against armed persons" — is a separate but related principle appearing in the same source tradition. It expresses a rule of self-defense and defensive force: that a person confronted by an armed aggressor is legally justified in meeting that threat with arms.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The phrase has no current common usage in English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not entered. The component word *arma* (Latin: arms, weapons) was understood in educated discourse as a term of classical and medieval learning, not everyday English.
The term has no meaningful gap to resolve between common and legal usage because it never entered ordinary English. It belongs entirely to the Latin legal vocabulary of medieval and early modern sources and survives only in historical legal texts.
Why It Matters in Research
*Arma dare* appears in historical sources primarily as a technical term of feudal and chivalric law, not as a doctrine with ongoing common law application. Researchers encountering it in medieval English legal records, Year Books, or early treatises should understand it as institutional vocabulary describing feudal ceremony rather than a justiciable legal rule.
The paired maxim *Arma in armatos sumere jura sinunt* is more likely to appear in substantive doctrinal contexts. Coke cites it at 2 Institutes 574 in connection with the use of defensive force, making it relevant to early treatments of self-defense and the law of justification. Researchers tracing the historical roots of self-defense doctrine — particularly in pre-modern English law — may encounter this maxim cited as authority for the proposition that defensive arming against an armed threat is lawful. It should be read as rhetorical and maxim-level support rather than as a precise legal rule with defined elements.
Because *arma dare* and the associated maxim belong to the Latin maxim tradition, they are more likely to appear in treatises, commentaries, and secondary digests than in original court records. Corpus searches should account for spelling variation and Latinized forms. The phrase rarely appears in post-eighteenth-century sources except in historical or comparative discussions.
Researchers should not conflate this phrase with modern statutory or constitutional discussions of the right to bear arms, which carry an entirely different doctrinal framework.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary is the principal source preserving these phrases in the Anglo-American legal dictionary tradition. The entry is brief and treats *arma dare* as a term of historical record — the dubbing of a knight — without suggesting any surviving doctrinal application.
The maxim *Arma in armatos sumere jura sinunt* is quoted with a citation to Coke's *Second Institute* at page 574, which is the standard anchor for this phrase in the English legal tradition. Historical dictionaries generally treat maxims of this kind as inherited from Roman and canon law learning, filtered through the medieval common law commentators. No significant divergence exists among historical sources on the meaning of either phrase; they are reproduced consistently but without elaboration.
What historical dictionaries do not provide is any account of how frequently these phrases appeared in actual litigation or how much weight courts gave them as authority. The maxim tradition in English law was often decorative as well as substantive, and researchers should not assume that citation of a maxim reflects settled judicial practice.
Jurisdictional Note
These phrases are specific to the medieval and early modern English legal tradition and have no recognized application in contemporary common law jurisdictions. The self-defense principle embedded in *Arma in armatos sumere jura sinunt* has been absorbed into and superseded by modern statutory and case law on justification and self-defense, which varies significantly by jurisdiction.