Definition
An archaic English legal term meaning death. In old English law, "demease" denoted the death of a person, particularly in the context of property transmission and the legal consequences that flowed from a decedent's passing. The term belongs to the vocabulary of early common law conveyancing and succession practice and is not in active modern legal use.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in general modern use; largely absent from contemporary English dictionaries as either a common or legal term.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; the root concept connects to the French "décès" (death) and the broader family of Anglo-French terms entering English through Norman legal practice.
The gap here is one of register rather than meaning: "demease" was never ordinary English. It was a term of art confined to legal instruments and pleadings, and its disuse left no residual common-language meaning to create confusion. A researcher encountering it in historical documents need only recognize it as a formal equivalent of "death" and ask what legal consequences the document attaches to that event.
---
Common Confusion
DEMEASE is closely related to — and easily confused with — DEMISE. The two terms share a root and overlapping historical usage. "Demise," however, carries a much broader and more durable legal meaning: it refers to a conveyance or lease of an estate (particularly real property), and it also carries the specific sense of the transmission of a crown or sovereign title upon the death of the monarch. "Demease" functions solely as a synonym for death itself. A researcher reading an old instrument or treatise must distinguish whether the document uses "demise" in its conveyancing sense (a transfer of property) or its mortality sense (death), and must recognize "demease" as the narrower term pointing only to the latter. The two words appear in overlapping contexts — estates, tenancies, and succession instruments — which amplifies the risk of conflation.
---
Why It Matters in Research
DEMEASE is a term a researcher will encounter only in historical sources — primarily English legal instruments, pleadings, or treatises predating the systematic modernization of legal vocabulary. Its significance is navigational: recognizing the term prevents misreading a document that treats the death of a party as a triggering event for property rights, lease termination, or title succession.
Several traps deserve attention. First, the word's visual similarity to "demise" can cause a researcher to import conveyancing or leasehold meanings that do not belong. Second, because both Black's editions define it simply as "death" without further elaboration, the historical dictionaries offer no guidance on the specific procedural or substantive contexts in which the term appeared. Researchers working with early English common law sources — particularly Year Books, early Chancery materials, or Tudor-era conveyancing forms — should consult primary sources rather than relying on dictionary entries alone to understand how demease functioned in context. Third, the term does not appear in American legal sources with any significance; its corpus life is essentially English and pre-modern.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary treat "demease" identically: "In old English law. Death." The entries are among the briefest in both volumes, offering no illustrative context, no cross-reference to related doctrine, and no indication of the procedural settings in which the term appeared. This is informative in its own right — it signals that by the time Black compiled his dictionary, the term was already sufficiently archaic that even a comprehensive legal dictionary did not elaborate on it. The two editions show no evolution between them; the definition was carried forward unchanged, suggesting the compilers found nothing to add or correct. Researchers should not interpret the brevity of these entries as evidence that the term was unimportant in its own era; it simply means the dictionaries treat it as a dead term requiring identification rather than analysis.
---
Jurisdictional Note
DEMEASE is a term of old English law and has no recognized independent usage in American, Canadian, or other common law jurisdictions. Where American courts or instruments use the concept of death as a legal trigger, they employ modern statutory vocabulary or the related term "demise" in its succession sense.
---