Definition
An Anglo-French legal term meaning "to sleep," "to be dormant," or "to become suspended." Used in older common law sources to describe a right, claim, or legal condition that has fallen into a state of inactivity or suspension — neither extinguished nor actively exercised. The related adjectival form, *endormy*, describes the dormant or suspended state itself.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): French verb meaning "to put to sleep" or "to cause to fall asleep."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed; the term was not part of ordinary English vocabulary and appeared only in legal or Anglo-French contexts.
Editorial note: The common French meaning — causing sleep — is metaphorically continuous with the legal meaning, but the legal usage applies the concept abstractly to rights and legal conditions rather than to persons. A researcher encountering *endormir* in a legal source should read it as a term of art describing suspension or dormancy of a legal interest, not any literal reference to sleep.
Common Confusion
*Endormir* and *endormy* are occasionally confused with terms describing permanent extinction of a right, such as merger or extinguishment. The distinction is material: a dormant or *endormy* right is merely suspended and may potentially be revived, whereas an extinguished right is permanently destroyed. The metaphor of sleep, as opposed to death, captures this distinction precisely as the term's original users intended it.
Why It Matters in Research
*Endormir* and its adjectival form *endormy* appear almost exclusively in early Anglo-French legal texts and the treatises and abridgments that drew on them. Researchers working in medieval English law, Year Books, or early common law treatises may encounter the term when tracing the status of dormant seigniories, suspended conditions, or lapsed procedural rights. The concept maps loosely onto what modern law would call a dormant right or an abeyance, but the correspondence is not exact — researchers should resist automatically substituting modern equivalents without examining the specific legal context.
Because the term is Anglo-French rather than Latin or Middle English, it can be missed by researchers searching only Latin glossaries or English-language indexes. Legal dictionaries from the nineteenth century that emphasize Latin sources may omit it entirely or treat it cursorily. Burrill's citation to Britton (c. 108) provides the most direct primary source anchor; researchers tracing the term should begin there and work outward to the broader manuscript and printed tradition of Britton.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole significant treatment among the standard historical legal dictionaries. Burrill defines *endormir* as "[t]o sleep; to be or become dormant" and *endormy* as "dormant or suspended," citing Britton, chapter 108. The entry is brief, reflecting the term's narrow usage rather than any analytical deficiency on Burrill's part.
No substantively different treatment appears in Tomlin, Bouvier, or Black's early editions, which either omit the term or do not expand on Burrill's account. This absence is itself informative: the term had largely passed out of active legal usage by the time the major nineteenth-century dictionaries were compiled, surviving principally as a historical artifact in treatise commentary on early English law. Researchers should treat the Britton reference as the authoritative source and not rely on secondary dictionary entries as independent authorities.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to the Anglo-French legal tradition and the early common law of England. It has no recognized usage in American, Scottish, or civil law sources. Researchers working outside the English medieval and early modern legal corpus are unlikely to encounter it.