Definition
In old law French legal usage, *degager* means to deliver or release something upon the giving of security; to free from a pledge or gage by furnishing the required surety or guarantee. The term describes the act by which a party obtains the release of a person or property held as security by offering a substitute pledge or other acceptable assurance in its place.
The term operates within the broader medieval framework of gage-based security arrangements, where physical custody of property or persons could serve as a form of collateral. To *degager* was to undo that arrangement — to discharge the encumbrance through the provision of security sufficient to satisfy the holding party.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Dégager* is a French verb meaning to free, release, clear, or disengage something from a constraint or obstruction. It carries a general sense of removing something from a confined or entangled state.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not include *degager* as an English entry, reflecting its status as a term retained from Law French rather than absorbed into ordinary English vocabulary.
The common French meaning of release or disengagement is not far from the legal sense, but the legal usage is narrower and more technical: it specifically implies release contingent upon the substitution of security, not mere liberation. The operative condition — the giving of a gage — is essential to the legal meaning and absent from the ordinary sense.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Degager* is a relic term belonging to the Law French stratum of medieval English legal sources. Researchers will encounter it primarily in early English legal records, Year Books, and treatises drawing on the Norman French vocabulary that dominated English common law writing from the Conquest through the early modern period.
The chief research trap is reading *degager* as a synonym for unconditional release or discharge. The term implies a transaction — something is given in return for the release. A record stating that a party *degaged* a prisoner or property should prompt the researcher to look for what security was tendered, not merely to note that a release occurred.
Burrill's entry is fragmentary, cutting off mid-sentence (the source text reads "De-"), which signals that the original entry may have continued with elaboration now lost to the available excerpt. Researchers relying on Burrill alone should treat the definition as a starting point and consult Kelham's *Norman-French Dictionary* directly, which Burrill cites as authority for the term.
This term belongs to a cluster of gage-related Law French vocabulary — including *engager*, *gager*, and *mainprise* — that structured medieval English security law before modern concepts of bail, bond, and suretyship took their present forms. Understanding *degager* in isolation misses its function within that system.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only available historical legal dictionary entry, and it is abbreviated. Burrill defines the term as meaning "to give security; to deliver on gage or security," citing Kelham's Law French Dictionary as his authority. The entry breaks off, suggesting the full Burrill entry contained additional material not preserved in the available source.
No entry for *degager* appears in other standard historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus. This reflects the term's narrow scope: it was a working term of medieval legal practice rather than a doctrinal concept requiring extended definition. It appears in sources as a verb describing a procedural act, not as the name of a legal doctrine or right.
The scarcity of coverage across historical dictionaries is itself informative — researchers should not expect *degager* to anchor a body of doctrine. It is instrumental vocabulary, the kind of term that appears in legal instruments and procedural records rather than in treatises analyzing substantive law.
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Jurisdictional Note
*Degager* is a term of historical English law derived from Law French. It has no living application in any modern jurisdiction and carries no current statutory or common law meaning. Its relevance is confined to the interpretation of pre-modern English legal documents and the sources that describe that tradition.
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