Definition
A Law French adverb meaning "likewise" or "in the same manner." Used in medieval English legal pleading and writs to signal that what was said or established in one clause or instance applies equally to another. Functioned as a connective term in formulaic legal instruments, analogous to the modern drafting phrase "and similarly" or "in like manner."
Why It Matters in Research
Autresint is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in transcribed or facsimile reproductions of medieval English legal records, plea rolls, and early writs. It belongs to the Law French stratum of the common law vocabulary — the Norman-inflected legal dialect that dominated English court documents roughly from the twelfth through the seventeenth centuries. Researchers working with Year Books, early plea rolls, or treatises such as Littleton's Tenures will encounter Law French connectives of this kind without glossary support in the source itself.
The practical research trap is treating autresint and its cluster of near-synonyms (auxi, aussi, auxibien) as interchangeable. Burrill's entry groups them in close proximity precisely because they overlap in sense, but their deployment in source texts follows the formulaic conventions of the specific writ or pleading form in which they appear. Misreading the connective can cause a researcher to misread the scope of an obligation, grant, or plea — whether a second party or condition was being brought within the same legal effect as the first.
Autresint does not appear in modern legal drafting. Its relevance is purely paleographic and historical. Researchers consulting digitized collections of medieval English legal instruments should be aware that OCR and early transcription projects frequently misread or omit Law French connectives, so manual verification against manuscript images is advisable when the precise scope of a clause matters.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only substantive entry among the shelf sources, defining autresint as "likewise" with attribution to Kelham's Glossary of Norman and Old French Words. Burrill groups the term alongside a cluster of related Law French particles — auver (to have), auxi/aussi (so; also), and auxibien (well) — indicating that these were companion terms in the same register of formulaic pleading language rather than terms with sharply differentiated legal significance.
Kelham's Glossary, which Burrill cites, remains the primary specialist reference for Law French of this kind. No modern legal dictionary treats autresint as a term of substantive legal doctrine; its interest is entirely lexicographic and archival. The historical sources are consistent on the meaning but thin on context, reflecting the fact that by the time systematic legal dictionaries were compiled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Law French had been dead as a working legal language for over a century.
Jurisdictional Note
Autresint is a term of English legal history with no living jurisdictional application. It will not be encountered in American, Canadian, or modern English legal materials except in scholarly historical reproductions.