Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "entire" or "whole." It appears in early English legal texts as a modifier, most commonly in the phrase *entier sanke* (entire blood or whole blood), denoting a relationship of full consanguinity — that is, descent from the same father and mother on both sides, as distinguished from half-blood. As a standalone term, *entier* carries no independent legal force; its significance is derived entirely from the compound phrases in which it appears.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In mathematics, *entier* refers to the floor function — the greatest integer not exceeding a specified number (e.g., the entier of 3.7 is 3).
Historical common usage: The mathematical sense is a borrowing directly from French, where *entier* means simply "whole" or "entire."
The legal usage of *entier* has no meaningful connection to either the mathematical or everyday English sense. Its appearance in legal texts is a relic of Law French and signals an archaic doctrinal context — most often the law of descent and inheritance — not any quantitative or modern English meaning.
Common Confusion
Researchers encountering *entier* in historical English legal texts may misread it as an unusual spelling of the common English adjective "entire," which is technically accurate but unhelpful without recognizing its Law French origin and specialized application. More importantly, *entier* should not be confused with the substantive English legal term *entire* as it functions in modern contract or property doctrine (e.g., "entire contract," "entire interest"). The two share etymology but function in distinct doctrinal contexts.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a marker for archaic inheritance and property law materials. When you encounter *entier* in a source, you are almost certainly working with pre-modern English common law — Littleton, Bracton, or commentary in that tradition — not with any modern statutory or judicial framework.
The phrase *entier sanke* is the primary site of legal significance. Whole-blood versus half-blood distinctions governed inheritance rules under early common law, including who could inherit as heir and who was excluded in cases of intestate succession. If you are tracing the historical law of descent, this term connects you to Littleton's *Tenures* and its commentators. Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt.) is the natural next stop in the corpus.
Be alert to variant spellings in historical sources: *entier*, *entier*, *entier sanke*, *entire blood*, and *whole blood* may all appear in close proximity in period texts, sometimes treated as interchangeable, sometimes distinguished by context. Modern headnotes and digests will almost always use "whole blood" or "half blood" rather than the Law French forms.
This term does not appear in modern American or Commonwealth statutory codes. If it surfaces in a research trail, it almost certainly originates in a historical source, a treatise discussing common law history, or a case that traces the origins of a descent rule back to Littleton or Coke.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives a minimal entry: *L. Fr. Entire; whole. Entier sanke; the whole blood. Litt. sect. 2.* The citation to Littleton section 2 is instructive — Littleton opens his *Tenures* with the concept of tenant in fee simple and the conditions of inheritance, including the requirement of whole blood in heirs. This grounding in Littleton confirms that *entier* is a term of feudal property law, not a general-purpose adjective that migrated into legal usage.
Burrill does not elaborate on the doctrinal consequences of the whole-blood rule, nor does it trace the term's disappearance from legal usage. The entry is purely definitional and referential. Researchers should treat it as a pointer to Littleton and not as a standalone doctrinal source.
Jurisdictional Note
*Entier* and the whole-blood distinction it reflects were carried into early American common law through the reception of English common law, but the half-blood exclusion rules were widely modified or abolished by American intestacy statutes during the nineteenth century. No U.S. jurisdiction uses the Law French term *entier* in its current statutory code.