Definition
An obsolete Law French term meaning a weapon. Encountered almost exclusively in early English legal records and statutes, where it appears in procedural and pleading contexts requiring identification of the instrument used in a crime — most commonly in homicide matters. The phrase *de quel arme il fuist occise* ("with what weapon he was slain") illustrates its primary function: specifying the means of killing in an indictment or inquisition record.
*Arme* is not a term of living legal usage. It survives only as a reading aid for researchers working in medieval and early modern English legal materials written in Anglo-Norman (Law French).
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete spelling of *arm* (the body part or, by extension, a weapon).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): *Arm* in its weapon sense appears in Webster's as "a weapon of offense or defense; an instrument of warfare" — a meaning carried over directly from French *arme* and Latin *arma*.
The gap here is not between legal and common meaning — both point to "weapon" — but between the term's active role in Law French pleading and its complete disappearance from modern legal vocabulary. A researcher encountering *arme* in a manuscript or printed statute should not read it as a variant spelling demanding interpretation; it is simply the Law French word for weapon, equivalent in force to the modern term of art "deadly weapon" or "instrument of force" in pleading contexts.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is a paleographic and linguistic trap, not a substantive legal concept. Researchers working with:
- Statute rolls and printed editions of early English statutes (particularly those from the reign of Edward I onward, where Law French was the language of record);
- Plea rolls, coroners' inquisitions, and indictments from the thirteenth through seventeenth centuries;
- Secondary works quoting or paraphrasing these sources verbatim —
will encounter *arme* and its inflected or variant forms (*armes*, *arme blanche*, etc.) as a standard element of the killing-instrument formula. Misreading or skipping the term can cause a researcher to miss the specific weapon alleged, which in some historical legal contexts affected the nature of the charge or the applicable procedure.
The Statute of Gloucester (c. 9), cited by Burrill, is an important touchstone: it is a genuine thirteenth-century English statute, and its Law French text uses *arme* in exactly this pleading-specification sense. Researchers tracing the history of weapons-based charges, or the evolution of indictment pleading requirements, should expect this term throughout the pre-modern corpus.
No connection to modern statutory or constitutional arms provisions should be assumed from the word alone. The doctrinal content of modern "arms" law — Second Amendment jurisprudence, armed robbery statutes, weapons enhancements — is entirely separate from this archaic term and is addressed in the encyclopedia entries cross-referenced above.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is spare but accurate: "L. Fr. A weapon. *De quel arme il fuist occise*; with what weapon he was slain. Stat. Glocest. c. 9." This is the entirety of useful historical dictionary treatment, and it is sufficient. The term has no contested legal meaning, no doctrinal complexity, and no recorded divergence across historical sources. It appears in Burrill as a reading glossary entry — a tool for decoding Law French texts — rather than as a term carrying independent legal significance.
No substantive historical treatment of *arme* as a legal concept exists because the word was never itself a legal concept. It was the vocabulary in which legal concepts (weapon specification in pleading) were expressed during the Law French period.
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Jurisdictional Note
Relevant only to English legal history. *Arme* has no presence in the American, Scottish, or continental legal traditions as a term of art. Researchers working in early colonial American records should note that Law French survived in some English legal forms exported to the colonies, but its use was thin and fading by the seventeenth century.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Armed Robbery and Carjacking — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia (for the modern doctrine of weapons-based criminal charges that evolved from the historical pleading tradition in which *arme* appeared)
The Second Amendment — Individual Right to Bear Arms (Heller) — The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia
The Right to Bear Arms and State Militia (Historical Context of the Second Amendment) — The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia
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