Definition
Et kabuit (also rendered et habuit) is a Latin phrase meaning "and he had it." In medieval English legal practice, the phrase functioned as a formulaic notation in the Year Books indicating that a party's application or demand had been allowed by the court. It appears most frequently as a compact record of judicial approval — a shorthand confirmation that whatever was sought (a view, a writ, a continuance) was granted.
The phrase is not a substantive legal doctrine or cause of action. It is procedural notation, part of the dense Latin and Law French formulary that structured Year Book entries from the thirteenth through the early sixteenth centuries.
Common Language
This is pure legal and scribal jargon with no meaningful counterpart in ordinary English usage. The Latin is transparent — et ("and") + habuit (past tense of habere, "to have") — but the phrase carries no common usage independent of its Year Book context. The COMMON LANGUAGE section is omitted accordingly.
Common Confusion
Et kabuit and et habuit are variant spellings of the same phrase. The "k" form reflects inconsistent medieval and early modern transcription of Latin, where scribes and later typesetters occasionally rendered the Latin "h" or "hab-" cluster differently across manuscripts and printed editions. Researchers encountering et kabuit in a source should treat it as identical in meaning and function to et habuit. Neither form should be confused with et habendum, a distinct phrase associated with the habendum clause in conveyancing, which governs the extent of an estate granted — a very different legal context.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in the Year Books or in treatises and abridgments derived from them will encounter et habuit (and its variant spellings, including et kabuit) as a recurring procedural marker. Understanding it prevents misreading: the phrase is not a holding, not a rule of law, and not a term of art with downstream doctrinal significance. It is evidence that a specific procedural request was granted in a specific case.
Key navigational points:
The phrase is almost always embedded in a longer Latin or Law French formula. The surrounding context — particularly what was demanded immediately before et habuit — carries the substantive content. The phrase itself is the judicial response, not the substance of the demand.
Spelling variation is significant in corpus searches. Year Book materials were transmitted through manuscript copying and later through early print editions, both of which introduced scribal inconsistency. A full-text search for et habuit will not capture et kabuit and vice versa. Researchers conducting corpus-wide searches of Year Book-derived materials should account for both forms and potentially for other variants.
The Black's citation (M. 6 Edw. III. 49) points to Michaelmas term of the sixth year of Edward III's reign — approximately 1332 — and the example given is a demand for view (la view), one of the standard preliminary steps in real property litigation of the period. This gives researchers a concrete anchoring example for the phrase's procedural home.
For researchers tracing the history of procedural notation and court record-keeping, et habuit/et kabuit belongs to a family of Year Book shorthand expressions (alongside et allocatur, et non allocatur, and similar forms) that together constitute the grammar of medieval English judicial reporting.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the only dictionary entry for this term in the Law Mind corpus. The entry is brief but accurate: "And he had it. A common phrase in the Year Books, expressive of the allowance of an application or demand by a party." The illustrative example — Pam. demanda la view. Et habuit, etc. M. 6 Edw. III. 49 — is a genuine Year Book citation and correctly represents the phrase's typical usage pattern.
No other historical dictionaries in the corpus address this term independently, which is consistent with its nature: et habuit is a procedural formula rather than a legal concept requiring doctrinal treatment. Cowell's Interpreter and Termes de la Ley, which cover many archaic legal phrases, do not appear to have treated it as a standalone entry, likely because it was considered self-evident to readers trained in Year Book Latin.
The Black's entry uses the et habuit spelling throughout, treating et kabuit as an equivalent variant without explicit comment. Researchers should not assume that the "kabuit" spelling signals a distinct meaning or usage.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is specific to the English Year Book tradition and the common law courts from which it descended. It has no independent role in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions' legal vocabularies.