Definition
ESLAUNDER is an archaic Law French term with two distinct recorded meanings: (1) slander — that is, the oral defamation of another person; and (2) to choose or select. The dual meanings reflect the term's appearance in different historical legal contexts and sources, and the two senses are unrelated to one another beyond their shared orthographic form in Law French.
Common Confusion
The two meanings of ESLAUNDER are entirely unconnected. The defamation sense derives from a French root cognate with "slander," while the "to choose" sense appears to reflect a separate Law French usage documented by Kelham. Researchers encountering the term in a historical text must determine from context which meaning applies. The slander sense appears in Keilway's reports; the "to choose" sense is associated with the Statute of Westminster I and related exchequer records.
Why It Matters in Research
ESLAUNDER is encountered almost exclusively in early English legal records, Year Books, and statutes written in or drawing on Law French. Its relevance to modern research is primarily historical and linguistic rather than doctrinal.
The slander meaning is the more commonly noticed sense. Researchers working in early common law materials on defamation should be aware that ESLAUNDER, SLANDER, and related Law French variants may be used interchangeably in pre-modern sources, and that the conceptual boundaries between slander, libel, and related wrongs were not yet fixed in the periods when this terminology was current.
The "to choose" sense presents a distinct navigational challenge: a researcher focused on defamation law who encounters ESLAUNDER in a statutory or exchequer context — particularly in materials related to the Statute of Westminster I — may misread the passage entirely if the defamation meaning is assumed. The Burrill entry's citation to "Ont esMem. in Scacc. H." (Memoranda Rolls in the Exchequer) signals an administrative or procedural context where the selection sense is operative.
Law French terms of this kind are not indexed in most modern legal research databases with consistency. Full-text searches for ESLAUNDER will return sparse results; researchers should also search variant spellings and the underlying English equivalents (slander; choose, elect) when working in the relevant period sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source documenting both senses of ESLAUNDER. Burrill's entry is concise to the point of compression: it cites Keilway (Keilw. 27b) for the slander meaning and Kelham's Law French dictionary for the "to choose" meaning, and it ties the latter to the Statute of Westminster I (3 Edw. I, c. 1) and exchequer memoranda. No other major historical law dictionary in the standard reference shelf — not Bouvier, not Black's in its early editions, not Tomlin's Law Dictionary — appears to carry a separate entry for ESLAUNDER, which itself signals how thoroughly the term had passed out of active legal use by the time those works were compiled. Burrill, writing in the mid-nineteenth century with a particular commitment to Law French and Anglo-Norman legal vocabulary, preserved the entry where others did not.
Researchers should treat the Kelham citation as significant: Robert Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language (1779) remains one of the few dedicated reference works on Law French vocabulary, and his identification of the "to choose" sense provides independent corroboration separate from the case-law tradition.
Jurisdictional Note
ESLAUNDER has no current operative meaning in any common law jurisdiction. Its relevance is confined to historical English law and the Law French materials of the medieval and early modern English legal tradition.