Definition
An archaic English legal term appearing in the old law phrase "to lange and to bred." The term is not used independently in legal practice; its meaning and significance arise entirely from its appearance within that compound phrase in Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae. Early glossators, including Cowell, rendered the phrase as "too long and too broad," but Burrill notes that the context of the relevant passage in Bracton requires a materially different interpretation. The precise legal import of "to lange and to bred" as a phrase — and therefore of "bred" within it — is treated under that entry.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simple past and past participle of "breed."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Past tense and past participle of "breed"; used in compounds such as "well-bred" (of good family or good manners) and "bred out" (degenerated).
The common English meaning — ancestry, propagation, upbringing — bears no relationship to the legal use. In the legal context, "bred" is not a form of "breed" at all; it is an independent Old English word surviving only in a fixed legal phrase. A researcher encountering "bred" in a Bracton-era text should not interpret it through the lens of the ordinary English verb.
Common Confusion
The surface resemblance to the past tense of "breed" has led to mistranslation. Cowell's rendering of "to lange and to bred" as "too long and too broad" treats "bred" as though it carries its common English sense of spatial or physical extension — but Burrill expressly flags this translation as wrong, noting the passage context demands something different. Researchers should treat Cowell's gloss with caution when working with this phrase in primary sources.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears in Law Mind's corpus almost exclusively in the context of Bracton scholarship and glossaries of old law terms. Its sole research significance is as a pointer: any source containing "bred" in a legal context that predates modern usage is almost certainly referencing the Bractonian phrase, and the researcher should immediately turn to the "to lange and to bred" entry for substantive analysis.
The Cowell mistranslation matters for corpus navigation. Secondary sources that rely on Cowell — including some later English law dictionaries — may propagate the "too long and too broad" rendering without flagging its inadequacy. When tracing interpretation of specific Bracton passages in the historical literature, the researcher should note which sources draw on Cowell uncritically and which engage independently with the Latin and Old English text.
Because "bred" has no independent legal definition apart from its role in this phrase, there is no doctrinal content to track across jurisdictions or time periods. The term's only research value is lexicographic and textual.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source in the Law Mind corpus treating this term. Burrill's entry is notably brief — essentially a redirect to the compound phrase — but it performs an important critical function by explicitly rejecting Cowell's translation and signaling that the interpretive question is unresolved or at least contested. Burrill does not supply his own affirmative translation, which leaves the meaning of "bred" in its legal sense technically open.
No other major historical law dictionaries in the standard corpus (Jacob, Tomlin, Bouvier) appear to carry a dedicated entry for "bred" as a standalone legal term. This is consistent with its nature as a component of a fixed phrase rather than an operative legal word.