Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "proclaimed" or "publicly declared." Appears in old legal records primarily in the phrase *discries enemies*, denoting notorious or publicly proclaimed enemies — persons whose hostile status had been formally announced or was a matter of open public knowledge, as distinguished from secret or suspected adversaries.
The term is essentially a relic of Law French usage in early English legal records and carries no independent doctrinal weight in modern law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Third-person singular simple present indicative of "discry" — itself an archaic or dialectal variant of "descry," meaning to catch sight of or discover something, particularly at a distance.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not carry a dedicated entry for "discries" or "discry" as a standalone headword, though "descry" appears in the sense of sighting or discerning from afar.
The gap here is complete. The common-language verb relates to visual discovery or perception. The legal term is a participial adjective from Law French meaning *proclaimed* — a declaratory legal act, not an act of seeing. A researcher encountering "discries enemies" in an old record who imports the English sense of "discry" will misread the passage entirely.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in early English records and yearbooks written in Law French or Law Latin. Researchers working with medieval or early modern English legal materials — particularly records touching on war, outlawry, treason, or the status of foreign enemies — may encounter the phrase *discries enemies* and need to recognize it as a term of art describing publicly proclaimed hostile status, not merely a descriptive phrase.
The principal trap is the false cognate problem: the English verb "discry" (to catch sight of) looks and sounds nearly identical to the Law French participial "discries" (proclaimed), and a researcher relying on English-language intuition rather than Law French reference tools will misread the term. Burrill flags the Kelham glossary as the supporting authority, and researchers working in this area should consult Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) directly for fuller context on the phrase.
The companion entry *DISCUS / Descus* (a desk or leaning shelf, from old Latin records) appearing immediately after in Burrill is unrelated and should not be conflated with this term despite their proximity on the page.
For corpus researchers, this term is a signal term: its presence in a document strongly suggests a medieval or early modern English provenance and a legal context involving the formal declaration of enemy status, outlawry, or wartime legal conditions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source, and its entry is brief: "L. Fr. Proclaimed. Discries enemies; notorious enemies." Burrill cites Kelham without further elaboration. No substantive treatment appears in later standard historical dictionaries of English law (Bouvier, Black's early editions), which suggests the term had effectively passed out of active legal usage by the nineteenth century when those dictionaries were compiled. Its absence from Black's is itself a research data point — by the American legal tradition's formative period, this term was already a pure archaism.
The term illustrates the broader challenge of Law French vocabulary in early English legal records: words that look English are not, and their meanings cannot be inferred from English roots.
Jurisdictional Note
Exclusively historical English law. No American, Commonwealth, or civilian jurisdiction adopted this term as operative legal vocabulary. Researchers will encounter it only in English records predating the formal abolition of Law French pleading (roughly 1730 in most contexts).