Definition
An archaic legal term for intermarriage — the act of marriage between persons of different families, clans, or groups, or between members of the same family or kindred. Entermarriage is the older English form of what became standardized as "intermarriage" in later legal usage. It appears in early common law texts and reports as a variant spelling rather than a term carrying independent legal content.
Common Confusion
ENTERMARRIAGE vs. INTERMARRIAGE: These are not two distinct legal concepts. Entermarriage is simply the older orthographic form of intermarriage. Researchers encountering entermarriage in historical sources should treat it as intermarriage and consult authority under that heading. The distinction is purely one of spelling convention and period, not of legal meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of knowing this term is recognizing it when it appears in early English legal sources and reports, particularly those predating the standardization of legal spelling and terminology. A researcher unfamiliar with the form might fail to connect it to the well-developed body of law under intermarriage.
Burrill's citation to Finch's Law and 1 Leon. 3 places the term firmly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century English legal literature. Finch's Law (Henry Finch, Nomotechnia, 1613, later translated and expanded as Law, or a Discourse Thereof, 1627) was an influential systematic treatment of English common law; its use of entermarriage reflects the spelling conventions of that period. Leonard's Reports (1 Leon. refers to the first volume of Leonard's Reports, covering cases from the reigns of Elizabeth I through James I) similarly reflect early modern legal English before orthographic conventions settled.
Researchers working in pre-1700 English legal materials, including Year Books, early reports, and treatises of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, should be alert to variant spellings of common legal terms. Entermarriage is a useful reminder that spelling instability in historical sources can obscure doctrinal continuity. The concept being discussed — the legal incidents and consequences of marriage between particular persons or groups — is continuous; only the spelling shifted.
No independent doctrine attaches to entermarriage as distinct from intermarriage. Do not treat the variant form as signaling a specialized or narrower meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment is appropriately brief: entermarriage is identified straightforwardly as the old form of intermarriage, with two supporting citations. Burrill offers no suggestion that the terms diverge in meaning. This is consistent with the broader pattern in early legal English of prefix variation between "enter-" and "inter-" (compare enterline/interline, enterplead/interplead), where the Latin prefix inter- was sometimes rendered in English texts as enter- before Latin orthographic conventions dominated legal writing. No historical dictionary in the standard corpus treats entermarriage as carrying content independent of intermarriage.