Definition
An obsolete Law French term carrying two distinct meanings in medieval English legal sources:
1. Understanding or intent. Used in the sense of "as I understand it" or "according to my understanding." Equivalent in function to the modern term "intent" when appearing in pleading or argument contexts.
2. The whole; the entirety. Used in conveyancing contexts to denote the totality of a thing, in contradistinction to a moiety or partial interest. When land was conveyed to a husband and wife jointly, the conveyance was understood to pass the entent — the whole — rather than divided shares.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete form of "intent."
Historical common usage: Not independently defined in Webster's 1913; the word had fallen from common use before that era.
The legal term carries a meaning that Wiktionary does not capture: alongside its use as a synonym for "intent," entent appears in property law as a term of quantity, meaning the whole as opposed to a part. A researcher who encounters entent and reads it solely as "intent" may fundamentally misread a conveyancing passage.
Common Confusion
The two senses of entent are superficially unrelated and context-dependent. In pleading or argument, entent signals the speaker's understanding or meaning. In conveyancing — particularly in passages describing transfers to husband and wife — entent signals wholeness or entirety. Confusing the two produces opposite errors: reading a property passage as a statement of intent, or reading a statement of understanding as a quantity term. The surrounding context (argument vs. conveyance instrument) is the only reliable guide to which sense applies.
Why It Matters in Research
Entent is a term of the Year Books and early common law reports, rarely surviving past the late medieval period in legal writing. Researchers working in pre-1600 English legal sources, particularly Year Book materials from the Henrician era, will encounter it in both senses described above. The Burrill citation to Yearb. M. 9 Hen. places it squarely in that corpus.
Two traps await the unwary researcher. First, the term is easily skipped as a variant spelling of "intent" and the property-quantity meaning is therefore missed entirely. Second, because entent in the conveyancing sense connects directly to doctrines of joint tenancy and the unity of possession as between husband and wife, a misreading can distort analysis of early common law marital property rules — a doctrinal area that evolved substantially between the Year Books and the modern era.
Researchers tracing the history of intent doctrine or the history of spousal conveyancing should treat entent as a bifurcated term and confirm which sense is operative before drawing conclusions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary source here and provides both senses, though the surviving text is fragmentary. The conveyancing sense — the whole in contradistinction to a moiety — is the more legally substantive of the two, and Burrill connects it explicitly to the rule that a conveyance to husband and wife passes the entirety rather than half-interests to each. This reflects the common law doctrine of tenancy by the entirety, though Burrill does not use that term in the recovered entry.
The intent sense aligns with the broader Law French vocabulary in which entent, entente, and related forms expressed understanding or meaning. No significant divergence exists among historical sources on this point; the term was simply archaic by the time the major English-language law dictionaries were compiled, and most omit it entirely.
Jurisdictional Note
Entent as an active legal term is confined to the English common law tradition and has no living jurisdictional variation. American researchers may encounter it only in historical sources tracing common law doctrine back to medieval English roots.