Definition
An Old Law French term meaning "to come to," "to attain," or "to amount to." The term appears in early legal texts and records as a verb of approach or arrival — conveying the sense of reaching a threshold, attaining a condition, or arriving at a particular legal state or sum. It is not a term of modern legal usage and survives only in historical legal sources and glossaries.
---
Common Confusion
ATEIGNER should not be confused with ATTAINDER or ATTAINT, which are substantive legal institutions. While there is a common etymological thread — all three trace to the sense of "reaching" or "touching" a person with legal consequence — ATTAINDER describes the civil death and corruption of blood that followed conviction for treason or felony, and ATTAINT described the ancient writ challenging a false jury verdict. ATEIGNER is the verb in its neutral, non-technical sense. Treating it as synonymous with either doctrine would misread the historical text.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter ATEIGNER primarily in medieval and early common law texts written in Law French, the linguistic hybrid that dominated English legal records from the Norman Conquest through roughly the seventeenth century. The term carries no operative modern legal meaning and will not appear in contemporary statutes, cases, or treatises.
The principal research trap is contextual misreading. Because ATEIGNER means "to attain" or "to amount to," it can appear in proximity to — and be confused with — terms derived from the related but legally distinct concept of ATTAINDER (corruption of blood following conviction for a serious crime) and ATTAINT (a proceeding challenging a jury verdict). These are substantive legal doctrines with their own histories; ATEIGNER is the raw verb from which related terms evolved, not a doctrine itself.
When transcribing or reading Year Books, plea rolls, or early equity records, researchers should note that Law French verb forms are frequently abbreviated or variant-spelled. ATEIGNER may appear as ateindre, ateint, or in other conjugated or anglicized forms depending on the period and scribe. Kelham's Normand Dictionary (cited by Burrill) is the standard reference for resolving such variants.
The entry in Burrill also immediately precedes a distinct term — ATHA — which is an entirely separate concept from Saxon law dealing with oaths. The physical proximity of these entries in dictionary sources is accidental (alphabetical) and carries no legal relationship. Researchers scanning Burrill's pages should take care not to associate the two.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only significant historical legal dictionary treatment available in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill's entry is minimal — essentially a gloss, attributing the definition to Kelham's Normand Dictionary. This brevity is typical of Burrill's handling of pure Law French verbal terms that function as roots or connective tissue in legal texts rather than as standalone doctrines.
No substantive elaboration appears in the available sources. The absence of treatment in later dictionaries reflects the term's status as a linguistic artifact rather than a living legal concept. Researchers requiring deeper philological context should consult Kelham directly, as Burrill explicitly defers to that source.
---