Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "in a hostile manner." Appearing in early English legal sources, the term functioned as an adverbial descriptor applied to acts characterized by enmity or hostile intent. Its primary utility was in pleading and indictment, where the manner of an act—whether friendly, negligent, or hostile—carried legal significance in distinguishing the nature and degree of a wrong.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational artifact rather than a living legal concept. Researchers encountering it will find it almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal materials, particularly in plea rolls, indictments, and treatises drafted in Law French. Its appearance signals a document of considerable age and likely English common law origin predating the transition to English-language pleading formalized in the late seventeenth century.
The principal research trap here is terminological fragmentation. Burrill's entry for ENEMIABLEMENT is truncated and runs immediately into a separate entry for ENDENT/ENDENTE without a clear break—a common formatting hazard in older compiled dictionaries where entries were typeset continuously. Researchers working from digitized or transcribed versions of Burrill must take care not to conflate these as a single definition. The passage following the definition of ENEMIABLEMENT ("ENDENT, Endente. L. Fr. Indented...") is an entirely distinct entry concerning indented writings and their use in presentment procedure.
Because the term functions descriptively rather than as a term of art with doctrinal consequences of its own, it will rarely appear as the subject of a case or treatise discussion. It is more likely to appear embedded within a quoted pleading formula or as part of a phrase characterizing a defendant's conduct. Researchers tracing the vocabulary of hostile intent in historical indictments should treat this term as a signal to look for parallel Latin formulations—particularly *hostiliter* and *inimicaliter*—which carried equivalent meaning in Latin-language legal instruments of the same period.
No modern legal usage of this term is documented. It does not appear in current statutory or common law contexts and should not be applied to contemporary research questions without explicit acknowledgment of its purely historical character.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole recorded entry among Law Mind's shelf sources. The definition is spare: the term means "in a hostile manner," with attribution to Kelham's *Glossary of Norman and Old French Words* (1779), which served as a foundational reference for Law French vocabulary in English legal sources. Burrill does not expand on context of use, frequency, or the range of proceedings in which the term appeared.
The brevity of the entry is itself informative. Burrill's practice was to provide fuller treatment of terms with active doctrinal content. The compressed entry suggests ENEMIABLEMENT was, even by the mid-nineteenth century, understood as a historical curiosity rather than a term requiring substantive legal analysis. No competing or divergent definitions exist among the available sources, as no other dictionary in the Law Mind corpus records the term.
Researchers seeking to expand on this entry should consult Kelham directly, as well as Cowell's *Interpreter* and Tomlin's *Law Dictionary* for Law French vocabulary of comparable vintage, though none are guaranteed to provide greater elaboration.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the English common law tradition and its Law French inheritance. It has no recorded application in civilian, Scottish, or American legal systems.
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