Definition
A Law French term meaning "another" or "of another." Autre does not stand alone as a legal term of art but functions as a prefix element in several compound phrases that remain in active use in Anglo-American legal writing. The three principal compounds are:
1. AUTRE ACTION PENDANT — Another action pending. The basis for a plea that a prior suit between the same parties on the same cause of action is already before a court. The functional modern equivalent is the plea in abatement for lis pendens.
2. AUTRE DROIT — The right of another. Used to describe a representative capacity: a trustee, guardian, executor, or other fiduciary who acts not in their own right but in autre droit — that is, in the right of another person. The phrase survives most visibly in the expression "to sue in autre droit," distinguishing a representative plaintiff from one asserting a personal claim.
3. AUTRE VIE — Another's life. The measuring life in a life estate held not for the grantee's own life but for the duration of a third party's life. A holder of such an estate is classically described as a tenant pur autre vie. This construction remains a live concept in property law wherever life estates are recognized.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Autre" is a standard French adjective meaning "other" or "another," with no specialized connotation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not include "autre" as an English entry; the term entered English legal usage directly from Law French and never passed into general English vocabulary.
Editorial note: Because "autre" has no English common-law counterpart and no independent meaning in general usage, researchers encountering it in legal texts should treat it exclusively as a marker for one of the three compound phrases above. It is not a borrowing from modern French; it is a remnant of the Norman legal dialect that produced much of the technical vocabulary of English common law.
Common Confusion
Autre is sometimes confused with the modern French word "autre" as though the legal phrase were a direct import from contemporary French legal writing. It is not. Law French was a fossilized professional dialect that diverged from continental French by the late medieval period; its spelling and usage conventions differ from modern French. Researchers working in early English Year Books or plea rolls may also encounter the variant spelling "auter," which is the same term.
Why It Matters in Research
Corpus researchers will almost never encounter "autre" in isolation. The term functions as a signal word: its presence in a document almost always indicates one of the three established compound phrases. The practical research task is disambiguation — identifying which compound is intended and then tracing that compound's doctrine.
In historical sources, the compounds appear in abbreviated or irregular forms. "Pur a.v." or "p. a. vie" in old plea records abbreviates pur autre vie. "A.a.p." can stand for autre action pendant. Recognizing these abbreviations requires familiarity with the full phrases.
The doctrinal content of each compound has evolved differently. Autre action pendant maps onto modern lis pendens and abatement doctrine but is not identical — historical pleading rules governing the plea differ from modern procedural rules on duplicative litigation. Autre droit connects to fiduciary and representative capacity law, an area that has been substantially reshaped by statute in most jurisdictions. Pur autre vie estates survive in modern property law but are now largely governed by statute rather than common law rules about what happens when the tenant pur autre vie dies before the measuring life (the old common law concept of occupancy for such estates has been largely abolished).
Researchers using this corpus for property history should link autre vie entries directly to life estate and fee simple materials, and watch for the way older treatises treat the rights of the tenant pur autre vie as categorically different from an ordinary life tenant — a distinction modern sources often flatten.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core translation — "another" — and list the same three principal compounds. Black's 2nd Edition is the most useful of the three for compound-level definitions, offering the pur autre vie cross-reference to Littleton and Blackstone, which correctly identifies the classical sources. Anderson's is notable for directing the reader to separate entries under PEND, DROIT, and VIE — a structure that reflects how these terms functioned in legal practice as independent doctrinal categories, not merely as phrases.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply is doctrinal depth on each compound. They identify and define but do not explain the procedural history of autre action pendant, the equitable development of autre droit in trust and agency contexts, or the statutory modifications to pur autre vie estates. Researchers should treat the dictionary entries as orientation, not as authority, and follow the cross-references into treatise and case law sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Pur autre vie estates remain recognized in virtually all U.S. common law property jurisdictions and in England and Wales, though their practical frequency is low. The rules governing what happens to a pur autre vie estate when the tenant dies before the measuring life vary by jurisdiction; most U.S. states have replaced the common law occupancy rule by statute. Autre droit as a concept in representative capacity is universal in common law systems but the procedural mechanics differ across jurisdictions.