Definition
To put away; to part with; to relinquish or give up a right, claim, or interest. In early Anglo-Norman legal usage, *demettre* describes the act by which a person voluntarily divests themselves of something held — whether a title, an estate, or a legal position. It carries the sense of active surrender rather than passive loss: the holder acts to put the thing away from themselves.
The term appears most naturally in contexts involving the relinquishment of tenure, the laying down of office, or the voluntary parting with a legal interest in land. It is a term of the Norman-French layer of English legal vocabulary and should be understood against that background.
Common Confusion
*Demettre* and *demise* share etymological roots and a loose family resemblance in meaning — both describe a putting-away or handing-over — but they are not interchangeable in English legal usage. *Demise* became a fully assimilated English legal term with specific applications in property and constitutional law. *Demettre* remained a Law French term without the same assimilation. Treating the two as synonyms in a research context would be an error.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *demettre* in historical English legal records, plea rolls, or early treatises should treat it as a term of art signaling voluntary divestiture, not forfeiture or involuntary loss. The distinction matters because medieval and early modern property law treated voluntary surrender and involuntary termination of tenure through quite different procedural mechanisms.
The term belongs to the Law French stratum of English legal vocabulary — that body of Anglo-Norman terminology that dominated English court language from roughly the Norman Conquest through the seventeenth century. Researchers working in Year Books, early Chancery records, or plea rolls from that period will encounter Law French vocabulary as a matter of course. *Demettre* is infrequent enough that it may not appear in less comprehensive Law French glossaries; Burrill remains one of the more reliable points of reference for terms this specialized.
The compressed entry in Burrill — essentially two glosses, "part with" and "put away," plus the reflexive form *mette se* — is characteristic of Law French dictionary treatment of the period. Burrill does not elaborate on procedural context or distinguish between categories of use, which means the researcher must supply that context from the surrounding document.
One navigational note: do not confuse *demettre* with *demise*, which, though etymologically adjacent and conceptually related, acquired a distinct and highly technical meaning in English property law (the grant of a lease, or the transfer of the Crown upon a monarch's death). The functional overlap in meaning — both involve a kind of conveyance or parting — makes the proximity of the two terms a potential source of confusion in early texts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry in the Law Mind corpus for this term. His treatment is characteristically spare: the Latin-French label, two English equivalents ("part with," "put away"), and the reflexive variant *mette se* with a cross-reference indicator. No further authority is cited.
The entry is consistent with the standard range of Law French glossary treatment for verbs of transfer and relinquishment. The reflexive form *mette se* — literally "puts himself [away from it]" — reinforces that the act described is volitional and first-person: the subject acts upon themselves to effect the separation from whatever interest is at stake.
Burrill does not place the term in procedural context or identify specific instruments or proceedings in which *demettre* characteristically appeared. Researchers needing greater specificity will need to consult Year Book indices or specialized studies of Anglo-Norman legal language.