Definition
A Latin term used in old English law with two distinct meanings depending on context:
1. (Of a statute or law) Put forth or promulgated. Used to describe the formal passage or issuance of a legislative enactment.
2. (Of a person) Brought forth or born. Used in pleadings and legal instruments to denote the birth of a child, particularly in matters touching legitimacy, inheritance, or proof of life.
Common Confusion
Editus should not be confused with edictum (an edict or formal proclamation) or with edere (to publish or bring forth), though all three share a common Latin root. Edictum refers to a specific form of authoritative legal pronouncement, particularly associated with Roman and civil law traditions, and carries its own body of technical meaning. Editus in old English law is a term of description in pleadings and records, not a form of legal instrument in its own right.
Why It Matters in Research
The dual meaning of editus is a genuine interpretive trap. A researcher encountering the term in a medieval or early modern English legal document must read it in context — editus applied to a statute means promulgated, while editus applied to a person means born. Conflating these meanings could produce a serious misreading of a pleading or record.
The term appears most often in Latin legal instruments, Year Books, and pre-modern chancery or common law pleadings. Researchers working in digitized collections of early English legal records should treat editus as a flag to pause and identify the grammatical subject. When the subject is a lex, statutum, or similar enactment, the promulgation meaning controls. When the subject is a filius, heres, or named individual, the birth meaning controls.
Editus also surfaces in contexts of legitimacy disputes and inheritance claims where the date or fact of birth had to be formally pleaded. In that context, it functions similarly to natus (born) and may appear interchangeably with it, though editus carries a slightly more formal, "brought forth" connotation.
Researchers should note that this term belongs to the vocabulary of Law Latin — the specialized Latin of English legal records — rather than classical Latin. Its meanings are technical conventions of that register, not strictly derivable from classical usage alone.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in close agreement, presenting virtually identical entries. All three sources confirm both the statutory and birth-related meanings. Bouvier's entry expressly attributes its definition to Black's, indicating that these dictionaries were drawing from a shared tradition rather than independent sources.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry retrieved for this term appears to be a misalignment in the source material — the text provided concerns ecclesiastical commissioners and diocesan revenue, which has no connection to editus. Researchers should treat Rapalje & Lawrence as offering no usable entry for this term; the apparent entry is almost certainly a pagination or indexing error in the source.
None of the historical dictionaries provide illustrative examples or case references, which reflects the term's status as a piece of receding Law Latin vocabulary by the time these dictionaries were compiled. Its absence from later legal usage means researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in pre-modern sources.