Definition
A Law French phrase meaning "that is to say." Used in older legal texts, pleadings, and instruments to introduce a clarification, specification, or explanation of something previously stated — functioning much as the Latin *videlicet* (commonly abbreviated *viz.*) or the English "to wit" does in legal drafting. The phrase signals that what follows is not a new proposition but a particularization or elaboration of what precedes it.
Common Confusion
*Asaver* is one of several Law French and Latin phrases that all perform the same "that is to say" function in historical legal texts. Researchers should be aware that *videlicet* (*viz.*), *scilicet* (*ss.* or *sc.*), "to wit," and *asaver* are functional equivalents in most documentary contexts, though subtle drafting conventions occasionally distinguished them. *Scilicet* was sometimes used more narrowly to introduce a venue or jurisdictional statement in pleadings, while *videlicet* and *asaver* were broader. In practice, historical drafters did not always observe these distinctions consistently.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with medieval and early modern English legal records — plea rolls, year books, conveyances, or common law pleadings — will encounter *asaver* (and its fuller form *cest asaver* or *c'est assavoir*) as a standard transitional device. Recognizing it prevents misreading the structure of a document: the clause following *asaver* is explanatory or enumerative, not additive. Failing to recognize this can cause a researcher to mistake a specification for an independent term or condition.
The phrase belongs to the Law French vocabulary that dominated English legal drafting from the Norman Conquest through the seventeenth century. Because Law French was a technical register rather than a living vernacular, its phrases were formulaic and do not always map neatly onto either medieval Norman French or modern French. *Asaver* is not a word a French speaker would recognize without legal training in the historical English tradition.
In the Law Mind corpus, this term is most likely to surface in transcriptions of historical instruments, abridgments, and early treatises rather than in modern materials. It is effectively a dead term in active legal drafting, having been displaced by "to wit," "namely," "that is to say," and *viz.* — all of which perform the same function in modern sources. When a corpus search returns *asaver* or *cest asaver*, the document is almost certainly pre-eighteenth century or a scholarly transcription of such a document.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the entry concisely: "*L. Fr.* To Cest asaver; that is to say." This is accurate as far as it goes. The entry reflects Burrill's general approach to Law French terms — identifying the language of origin and providing the English gloss without extended commentary. What Burrill does not address is the functional role of the phrase within documentary structure, which is the more useful information for a reader actually encountering the term in a source. No substantive divergence exists among the historical dictionaries on the core meaning; the phrase was universally understood as a particularizing or clarifying marker.