Definition
In historical legal usage, to intermeddle or intrude into an office, jurisdiction, or matter without lawful authority. The term describes the unauthorized assumption of a role, function, or office belonging to another — entering in where one has no right to act. It appears principally in early Anglo-Norman legal texts and in law French pleading contexts, denoting conduct that today might be addressed through quo warranto proceedings or actions for usurpation of office.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not present as a standard English entry; the term survives in French as "s'entremettre," meaning to intervene, meddle, or interpose oneself in the affairs of others.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The term was already archaic in general English usage by the nineteenth century, persisting only in legal and law French contexts.
Editorial note: The French sense of interposing or intervening carries a neutral or even positive connotation — a mediator or go-between might "s'entremettre" helpfully. The legal sense in Anglo-Norman sources is strictly negative: entremettre denotes unauthorized intrusion, not legitimate intervention. A researcher importing the modern French meaning would misread the legal context entirely.
Common Confusion
Entremettre is closely related to the Latin intromittere, from which Burrill derives it, but the two are not interchangeable in legal texts. Intromittere in Roman and civil law usage has a broader range, including authorized entry or possession. Entremettre in the Anglo-Norman common law tradition carries a predominantly wrongful connotation — intrusion without right — and should not be read as a neutral synonym for intromission. Similarly, researchers should not conflate entremettre with the Scots law term intromission, which, while etymologically linked, developed its own distinct doctrinal meaning in Scottish private law concerning unauthorized dealings with another's property.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in early Anglo-Norman legal materials — Britton, Bracton-era texts, and law French pleadings — and is unlikely to appear in any post-medieval English legal source outside of direct quotation or historical commentary. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should treat it as a marker of the law French stratum: its presence signals a source likely predating the gradual displacement of law French by English in legal proceedings (substantially complete by the late seventeenth century, formalized by statute in 1731 in England).
The critical research trap is treating entremettre as synonymous with any modern concept without accounting for its narrow, wrongful connotation. In Britton's usage — the primary source Burrill cites — the term describes persons who have intruded into an office ("qui se ad entremys del office"), which is a specific legal wrong, not a mere description of acting in an official capacity. A reader who encounters the term in a transcription or digest and renders it simply as "to act" or "to intervene" will lose the wrongful character that triggers the legal consequence.
Because the term connects to usurpation of office, corpus researchers following this concept forward in time should pivot to the vocabulary of quo warranto, intrusion, and usurpation in later English materials, and to concepts of unauthorized intromission in sources with civil law or Scots law influence.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's is the primary dictionary source available, and it handles the term competently within its limits: etymology from Latin intromittere, definition as intermeddle or intrude, and two illustrative citations from Britton (chapters 58 and 16). The first citation ("Qui se ad entremys del office") is particularly useful because it shows the past participial form "entremys" alongside the infinitive, which matters for researchers encountering variant spellings in manuscript sources.
What Burrill does not address is the doctrinal context — what legal remedy or proceeding the act of entremettre would trigger. For that, the researcher must go to Britton directly or to secondary treatments of early English office law. No modern legal dictionary carries this term as a living concept, which itself is historically informative: the term's disappearance from legal dictionaries tracks the disappearance of law French as a working legal language.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Researchers may find relevant context in Law Mind Encyclopedia entries on Law French, Quo Warranto, and Usurpation of Office.