Definition
An archaic Anglo-French legal term for adultery. Appearing in early English legal texts and records, avouterie denoted the act of adultery as a legal wrong cognizable in ecclesiastical proceedings and, in some medieval contexts, as a basis for civil consequences affecting property and inheritance rights.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in current general use; effectively obsolete in English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed; the term had already passed out of ordinary English by the nineteenth century.
Editorial note: Because avouterie never established itself in ordinary English usage, there is no meaningful gap between common and legal meaning to navigate — the term is pure legal and ecclesiastical vocabulary of the Anglo-Norman period, encountered almost exclusively in medieval pleading records, ecclesiastical court rolls, and early statutory texts.
Common Confusion
Avouterie appears in close proximity in historical sources to several similarly derived terms — avow, avowe, and avoury — with which it shares a root family in Law French. Burrill's own dictionary entry illustrates the hazard: the definitions of avouterie, avow, and avowe are run together in the text, making it easy for a researcher scanning the source to conflate adultery-related terminology with advowson and church patronage vocabulary. These terms are etymologically and conceptually unrelated. Avouterie derives from the Latin adulterium by way of Old French; avow and avowe derive from advocare and belong to the law of ecclesiastical patronage. A researcher encountering any of these terms in a medieval record should confirm which term is actually present before drawing conclusions about the legal subject matter.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers are most likely to encounter avouterie in three contexts: ecclesiastical court records from the medieval and early modern periods, where adultery was a matter of church jurisdiction; early common law pleading manuscripts and abridgments; and the foundational treatises, particularly Britton, to which Burrill's citation points.
The primary research trap is the one flagged under Common Confusion above: the physical proximity of avouterie, avow, and avowe in Law French dictionaries and legal manuscripts can mislead a researcher into misidentifying the subject matter of a record. Confirm the precise term before indexing or interpreting.
A secondary trap involves jurisdictional scope. Adultery in medieval England was not a common law crime in the modern sense; it was addressed primarily through ecclesiastical courts, which operated under canon law. A document referencing avouterie is therefore most likely an ecclesiastical record rather than a common law pleading, and the remedies and procedures associated with it will differ accordingly.
Burrill's citation to Britton, chapter 42, and to Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Com. 230) provides the clearest trail for further research. Britton, written in Law French in the late thirteenth century, is one of the earliest English legal treatises and the most likely source for this term in primary research. Blackstone's reference, appearing in the volume treating property and inheritance, likely addresses the civil consequences of adultery — particularly dower rights and legitimacy of issue — rather than ecclesiastical punishment.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary offers only a single-line definition: "L. Fr. Adultery." The entry is notable more for what surrounds it than for what it says. Burrill immediately follows avouterie with definitions of avow and avowe, and the compressed format of the source creates the conflation risk described above. The citations given — to Britton and to Blackstone — are the substantive content; the definition itself is purely translational.
No other source dictionaries were provided for this term, which is itself informative. Avouterie does not appear in most nineteenth-century legal dictionaries, reflecting its status as a term whose practical life had ended well before the common law dictionary tradition consolidated. Researchers should not expect to find the term in American legal sources of any period; it is a term of English medieval legal history.
Jurisdictional Note
Avouterie is a term of English medieval law and has no meaningful presence in American legal sources. Its relevance is confined to English ecclesiastical and early common law records, primarily from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries.