Definition
An Old Law French term meaning "to cut down" or "to cut off." Encountered in early English legal texts and Year Books, the term appears in procedural and property contexts where a physical or legal severance is being described — most often the cutting off of a right, title, or claim, or the literal cutting of timber or other attached property.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval and early modern English legal records, particularly the Year Books and early Chancery materials, will encounter DECOUPER as part of the Law French vocabulary that dominated English legal writing from roughly the Norman Conquest through the seventeenth century. Burrill's citation to Dyer, 36 — referring to the reports of Sir James Dyer, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, whose cases run from the 1510s through the 1580s — places the term's active use squarely in the Tudor-era common law. Because Law French was a highly specialized legal dialect, not identical to continental French, dictionaries of modern French are unreliable guides to meaning. The term should not be read through contemporary French (découper, meaning to cut out or to clip), which carries different connotations. When encountered in a manuscript or early printed source, the surrounding procedural context will usually clarify whether the cutting at issue is physical (waste, timber, estovers) or legal (cutting off an entail, barring a claim). Researchers should also be aware that Law French spelling was inconsistent; variant spellings such as DESCOUPER or DECOPER may appear in different hands or editions without change in meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole entry among the standard historical dictionaries. The entry is minimal: "L. Fr. To cut down; to cut off. Dyer, 36. L. Fr. Dict." This brevity is characteristic of Burrill's treatment of Law French terms that had ceased to carry active doctrinal weight by the mid-nineteenth century, when his dictionary was compiled. The citation to the Law French Dictionary (likely Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language, 1779, the standard reference Burrill draws upon for such terms) confirms the term's recognized place in the Law French lexicon without elaborating on its legal application. No entry appears in Bouvier, Black, or Tomlin, suggesting the term was already archaic for practicing purposes by the time those dictionaries were compiled. The absence from later dictionaries should not mislead a researcher into doubting the term's historical validity — it simply fell out of active use as Law French itself was displaced by English legal writing after the Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1731.