Definition
A word appearing in Law French legal sources meaning "to cut." In historical pleading and Year Book records, *couper* and its conjugated forms — *coupes* (cut), *coupamus* (we cut), *coupastes* (you cut) — appear in actions involving physical severance, particularly in early common law cases concerning waste, timber, crops, or other matters where cutting was an operative act giving rise to liability or defining the nature of a wrong.
The term is not a term of art in modern law. Its significance is purely historical and linguistic: it is a verb form carried over from the Law French idiom that dominated English legal pleading from the Norman period through the seventeenth century.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A dealer in horses or other livestock.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; the word does not appear as a standard English entry in Webster's 1913.
Editorial note: The common English noun *couper* (a livestock dealer, chiefly Scottish and Northern English dialect) is etymologically and functionally unrelated to the Law French verbal form *couper* meaning "to cut." A researcher encountering *couper* in a historical legal document should not read it as a reference to a trader or dealer. The legal usage is verbal, not nominal, and the context will typically involve an act of physical cutting alleged in pleading.
Common Confusion
The proximity of the Law French *couper* to the modern English noun *couper* (livestock dealer) creates a false-friend problem in historical source reading. Separately, the entry in Burrill immediately follows notation for *COURE* (to run) and *courge la distresse* (the distress runs), which are unrelated terms sharing only the same page neighborhood. Researchers should treat these as distinct entries and not read any grammatical or doctrinal connection between *couper* and *coure*.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a research trap, not a research destination. Encountering *couper*, *coupes*, *coupamus*, or *coupastes* in a Year Book, plea roll, or early abridgment signals that the document is using Law French verbal conjugation to describe an act of cutting — likely in an action of waste, trespass, or a dispute over timber or growing things. The verb form matters because early common law pleading was highly formalized: the precise act alleged (cutting versus carrying away, for instance) could determine the form of action available and the remedy sought.
For corpus researchers working in Law Mind's historical materials, the practical guidance is:
First, *couper* will not appear in post-seventeenth-century sources in its legal sense. Law French was formally abolished in English pleading in 1731, and the word retreats entirely to antiquarian and glossary use after that point.
Second, Year Book citations attached to this term — particularly *Dyer, 35b* and *Yearb. M. 8 Edw. III. 2* — are primary sources worth consulting when researching the early common law treatment of waste or physical harm to land and its appurtenances. Dyer's reports, while available in French editions, were compiled in the sixteenth century and reflect a transitional period in legal language.
Third, when building a search across Law Mind's older corpora, be alert to variant spellings: *coper*, *coupper*, and contracted forms appear in manuscript sources. Burrill's normalized spelling is a starting point, not a guarantee of consistency across primary materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment is characteristically terse: it provides the root meaning, conjugated forms with their English glosses, and pinpoint citations to Dyer and the Year Books. This is sufficient for identification purposes but does not offer doctrinal analysis.
Burrill's entry notably bundles *couper* with *COURE* (to run) as adjacent Law French verbal entries — an organizational choice that reflects the dictionary's glossary function rather than any substantive connection between the terms. Researchers should read the two entries independently.
No American or later English legal dictionaries (Bouvier, Black, Tomlin) carry *couper* as a separate entry, which confirms that the term had no continued independent life in common law doctrine. Its preservation in Burrill reflects that dictionary's particular attention to Law French as a philological matter.
Jurisdictional Note
Relevant only to English common law materials predating the 1731 abolition of Law French in pleading. No American jurisdiction developed independent usage of this term.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Old French Legal Terms in English Common Law
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Year Books: Structure and Research Use
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Waste (Common Law)