Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning the bar of a court — the physical or symbolic barrier in a courtroom separating the area reserved for judges and counsel from the space occupied by the public and parties. In old English legal usage, *barre* referred to the bar before which pleadings were conducted and judgments pronounced. The term appears in Law French legal formulae and reports, often in phrases describing oral pleading or argument made at the bar.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To form a barre chord on a guitar or similar instrument — pressing the index finger across all strings at a given fret.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not recorded as an English entry; the word in English contexts derives from French *barre*, meaning a bar, rod, or barrier.
The legal term *barre* carries none of the musical meaning and should not be confused with it. In legal sources it functions as a noun denoting the court bar itself, not as a verb, and it appears exclusively in Law French materials predating modernized English legal reporting.
Common Confusion
Researchers should not conflate *barre* with the anglicized term BAR, though they share the same root concept. *Barre* is the Law French spelling and appears in older Year Books and abridgments where Law French was the dominant medium of legal record. The anglicized BAR evolved into the broader modern concept encompassing the legal profession as a whole, admission to practice, and the courtroom barrier. *Barre* in primary sources signals a Law French document or passage and should be read in that context rather than imported directly into modern bar-related analysis.
Why It Matters in Research
The principal research value of *barre* is diagnostic: its presence in a source signals Law French provenance and approximate historical period. Year Books, early abridgments, and pre-seventeenth-century English reports regularly employed Law French, and *barre* appears in phrases recording oral arguments and pleading exchanges conducted at the bar of the court.
The Burrill entry is fragmentary — it breaks off mid-phrase with "Ore jeo ne re-" — which is characteristic of the Law French formula *ore jeo ne reply* or similar oral pleading expressions. Researchers encountering this fragment should look for the complete phrase in Year Book indices or in Rastell's or Fitzherbert's abridgments, where Law French pleading terminology is more fully preserved.
Do not treat *barre* as a freestanding legal concept with independent doctrinal content. It is a term of art within Law French legal discourse, not a distinct legal doctrine. Its significance is contextual: it situates a document within the oral pleading tradition of the English common law courts before Law French gave way to English as the language of legal record.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary historical dictionary source here, and its entry is conspicuously truncated. What survives confirms the Law French character of the term and its identification with the court bar, but the broken citation ("Ore jeo ne re-") prevents a complete reading of the illustrative phrase Burrill intended to provide. No competing definitions appear in other historical dictionaries surveyed for this entry.
Burrill's placement of *barre* among Law French terms reflects the standard nineteenth-century lexicographic practice of cataloguing archaic Law French vocabulary for practitioners encountering older authorities. The term would have been obsolete in active use by Burrill's time but remained necessary for reading and citing Year Book material.
Jurisdictional Note
*Barre* is an English legal term and does not appear in American, Scottish, or civilian legal sources in this sense. American legal researchers will encounter it only when consulting English Year Books or abridgments, or secondary works discussing the history of the English common law bar.