Definition
An archaic legal term denoting traffic in goods; the practice of buying and selling, or commercial dealing generally. The word appears in historical legal sources primarily as a descriptor of mercantile activity and, in some contexts, as a term of reproach when such dealing was conducted improperly or in violation of legal or moral norms — as in the buying and selling of things that ought not to be bought or sold (such as ecclesiastical offices or public duties).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Trade; bargaining; buying and selling.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Traffic; bargaining. [Obs.] Spenser."
The common and legal meanings here are largely coextensive, but the legal sources carry a faintly pejorative edge that ordinary usage does not always convey. In legal contexts, chaffery could imply trafficking in something improper — a connotation absent from the neutral commercial sense of the word in everyday historical English.
Why It Matters in Research
CHAFFERY is a term a researcher will encounter in medieval and early modern legal texts, Year Books, and ecclesiastical records rather than in modern case law. Its relevance to Law Mind corpus research is almost entirely historical:
First, watch for context. The word appears both neutrally (as a synonym for commerce or trade) and critically (as a characterization of corrupt or simoniacs dealing). Rapalje & Lawrence's entry, though fragmented in transmission, groups CHAFFERY with related terms CHAFFERS (goods, wares, and merchandise) and CHAFEWAX (an officer of Chancery). Researchers working in chancery records should note that these terms cluster together and may appear in close proximity in historical sources.
Second, do not confuse the term with modern commercial law concepts. When a historical treatise or pleading describes a transaction as "chaffery," it is not invoking any formal legal doctrine with continuing authority — it is using period vocabulary for trade or dealing, occasionally with implied criticism of the nature of the transaction.
Third, the fragmentary state of the Rapalje & Lawrence entry in the source material reflects a genuine feature of older legal dictionaries: chaffery was already an obsolescent term by the nineteenth century, and dictionary coverage is correspondingly thin and sometimes interrupted by adjacent entries.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: traffic; buying and selling. Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) states the definition succinctly. Rapalje & Lawrence adds the useful cluster of cognate terms — CHAFFERS for goods and wares, and CHAFEWAX for a Chancery officer responsible for sealing documents — suggesting that the word family had real functional presence in legal administration, not merely as abstract vocabulary.
What the historical dictionaries largely omit is the pejorative dimension documented in ecclesiastical and canonical sources, where chaffery could describe simony or other prohibited trafficking. Researchers working in canon law or church court records should be alert to this usage, which the secular legal dictionaries do not fully capture.
None of the source dictionaries supply case citations or statutory references, consistent with the term's status as descriptive vocabulary rather than a term of art carrying specific legal consequences.
Jurisdictional Note
CHAFFERY has no meaningful jurisdictional variation in the modern sense — it is not a live legal term in any contemporary jurisdiction. Its use is confined to English legal history and early Anglo-American sources derived from it.