Definition
An obsolete Law French term meaning to raise, lift up, or set up. In its legal usage, *enhauncer* referred to the act of raising or elevating a physical or material object. The related form *enhaunce* (raised) appeared in conjunction with its opposite *abatu* (lowered or demolished), expressing the binary condition of a thing as either erected or brought down. The term was applied to material objects and appears in early Anglo-Norman legal writing, not as a term of art with doctrinal weight, but as descriptive vocabulary within pleadings and treatises concerned with physical structures or conditions.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No current entry for *enhauncer* as a standard English word. The related verb *enhance* in modern English means to intensify, increase, or improve the quality, value, or extent of something — typically used of abstract qualities rather than physical elevation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 defines *enhance* as "to raise to a higher point; to increase; to augment" and traces it through Old French to the sense of lifting or raising. The physical sense of elevation was still recognized in 19th-century usage.
The gap between the historical legal term and modern understanding is significant in one specific way: where modern *enhance* has drifted almost entirely toward abstract improvement (enhancing value, enhancing performance), the Law French *enhauncer* retained the concrete, physical sense of literally raising or erecting a material object. A researcher encountering *enhaunce* in a medieval source should resist reading it as a valuation term and treat it as a physical descriptor.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear only in early Anglo-Norman or Law French sources — most likely in pleadings, assize records, or treatises from the medieval English legal tradition. Researchers working with Britton (the 13th-century legal treatise cited by Burrill) or comparable Norman-era texts may encounter *enhauncer* or its conjugated forms in passages describing the physical state of structures, enclosures, or boundaries — whether a fence, wall, or other fixture had been raised or lowered.
The primary research trap is reading *enhaunce* through the lens of its modern descendant. In a contemporary legal or commercial document, *enhance* suggests improvement or increase in value; in a Law French source, it describes a physical act of elevation with no necessary valuation implication.
Because the term is paired with *abatu* (raised or lowered, *enhaunce ou abatu*), researchers should treat the pairing as a standard binary formula in Norman pleading, similar to other paired opposites that structured descriptions of property conditions. Encountering one term without the other in a transcribed or translated source may indicate an incomplete transcription.
No significant doctrinal evolution attaches to this term. It did not migrate into common law as a term of art and is not found in modern statutory or case law usage. Its research value is purely historical and linguistic — a tool for accurately reading and translating early sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary entry of substance for this term. Burrill defines *enhauncer* as Law French for "to raise; to lift up; to set up," with the adjectival form *enhaunce* meaning "raised," and records the paired phrase *ou enhaunce ou abatu* (raised or lowered) with a citation to Britton, chapter 61.
No other major historical law dictionaries in the standard reference corpus — not Jacob's Law Dictionary, not Tomlin's Law Dictionary, not Black's early editions — appear to carry a dedicated entry for this term, which reflects its narrow currency even in historical legal writing. Its absence from those sources confirms that *enhauncer* was not a term that achieved broad doctrinal circulation; it was functional vocabulary in a specific medieval French-law context rather than a defined legal concept with independent legal consequence.
Burrill's citation to Britton is the anchor for any further research. Britton (attributed to John le Breton, circa 1290) is one of the foundational texts of early English common law written in Law French, and chapter 61 is the appropriate starting point for understanding the phrase in context.