Definition
To atterminer (also rendered attermine) is to grant a further period for the performance of an obligation — most commonly the payment of a debt — or to put off, adjourn, or respite a proceeding to a later time. The term operates in two closely related senses:
1. Procedural: To adjourn or delay a judicial proceeding; to grant a continuance or respite.
2. Obligations/Credit: To extend the time within which a debtor must satisfy a debt; to grant an indulgence of time to a debtor.
Both senses share the same core meaning: the granting of additional time by one with authority to do so, whether a court deferring a matter or a creditor allowing a debtor more time to pay.
Common Confusion
Atterminer should not be conflated with a general pardon, release, or discharge of a debt. The term does not imply forgiveness of the obligation or waiver of the proceeding — only its postponement. A debt atterminered remains fully due; the debtor has merely been granted more time. Similarly, in the procedural sense, atterminer is a deferral, not a dismissal.
Why It Matters in Research
ATTERMINER is an archaic Law French term that will appear almost exclusively in early English legal materials — medieval and early modern treatises, Year Books, and glossaries drawing on that tradition. Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century English common law sources, particularly in the areas of debt, credit, and court practice, may encounter the term or its variants (attermine, atterminement) without explanation.
The term has no meaningful survival in modern Anglo-American legal usage. Researchers should not expect to find it in nineteenth- or twentieth-century case law or statutes, except occasionally in historical quotation. When encountered in primary sources, the correct modern equivalents are: in the procedural context, continuance or adjournment; in the obligations context, extension of time, forbearance, or indulgence.
The debt-related sense carries particular research value. Early law governing the extension of credit and the granting of time to debtors — including questions of usury, the rights of sureties upon atterminement, and the effect of delay on co-obligors — used this vocabulary. A creditor who atterminered a debt without the surety's consent could, under early common law principles, discharge the surety's liability. That doctrine survives into modern law under the heading of suretyship and the effect of creditor-debtor modifications on guarantors, though the term itself has long since dropped away. Researchers tracing that doctrine to its historical roots will benefit from recognizing atterminer as the period term for what modern sources call extension or forbearance.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source for this term in the Anglo-American legal dictionary tradition, and its entry is brief: "To put off, or adjourn; to respite; to delay. Kelham. To grant further time for the payment of a debt." Burrill's citation to Kelham points to Robert Kelham's Domesday Book and a Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language (1779), a standard reference for Law French terminology, confirming the term's Norman-French roots and its role in the vocabulary of medieval English law.
Other major historical dictionaries — Black's, Bouvier's, and Tomlin's — do not carry independent entries for atterminer, reflecting the term's narrow currency even in the historical legal lexicon. Its appearance in Burrill but not in the broader tradition signals that researchers should treat it as a specialized archaism rather than a term of general legal art. Burrill's dual definition (procedural and debt-related) accurately captures the term's range; there is no meaningful dispute between sources about its meaning, given the limited historical record.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is rooted in English law and has no recognized usage in civil law jurisdictions. In American legal materials, it is effectively absent from any period of active legal practice, appearing only in scholarly or historical writing that draws on English antecedents.