Definition
An Anglo-Norman and Law French term appearing in medieval English legal records, equivalent to the modern English word "fact" or "deed." In historical legal usage, *faict* denoted an act, deed, or thing done — most commonly encountered in Law French pleadings, writs, and legal instruments of the medieval and early modern periods. The term carried the same transactional weight as the Latin *factum*: a completed act upon which legal consequence could attach. It appears in compound and contextual phrases across medieval legal records wherever a party's conduct, execution of a deed, or physical act was at issue.
Note on source material: The Burrill entry provided under this headword crosses into *faida* (blood feud), which is a distinct term. The entry below treats *faict* on its own terms as a Law French word of record, separate from the Germanic *faida* tradition, which is addressed under its own headword.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Fact" in modern English denotes a thing that is known or proved to be true; a piece of verifiable information.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Fact" — "A thing done or that comes to pass; an act; an event; a circumstance; specifically, an actual occurrence."
The gap here is one of orthographic distance rather than conceptual distance. *Faict* and "fact" are functionally equivalent in meaning, but a researcher encountering *faict* in a manuscript or printed Law French source may not immediately recognize it as the familiar modern word. The legal register also gave the term a more formal, deed-specific weight — emphasizing the *completed act* as a juridical event — than the modern word's broader epistemic sense of "true information."
Common Confusion
*Faict* is occasionally confused with *faida* (also rendered *feida*, *feid*) in reference works that alphabetize loosely or where manuscript headwords are difficult to distinguish. These are unrelated terms: *faict* derives from the Latin *facere* (to do, to make) and concerns acts and deeds in pleading; *faida* derives from Germanic roots and concerns the custom of blood vengeance among kindred. Burrill's dictionary itself appears to have merged or proximately positioned these entries, which can mislead a researcher scanning the *fa-* entries.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with Law French plea rolls, year books, or early printed abridgments will encounter *faict* regularly, particularly in phrases like *en faict* (in fact, as opposed to in law) or *faict de luy mesme* (his own act). The distinction between something existing *en faict* versus *en ley* (in law) was a live procedural distinction in medieval pleading, bearing on what had to be proved by evidence versus what could be determined by the court as a matter of law.
The term also appears in connection with deeds of conveyance — where a *faict* could refer to the physical instrument itself, parallel to the Latin *factum* and the later English "deed." This dual sense (the act, and the instrument evidencing the act) creates interpretive ambiguity in older texts that requires attention to context.
Because *faict* is phonetically and functionally close to the modern English "fact," it is easy to read past it without recognizing its technical weight in a given passage. In Year Book reports especially, the term often signals a substantive pleading distinction that the surrounding argument turns on.
Researchers should also be alert to variant spellings: *fait*, *fayt*, *fect*, and *fact* may all represent the same underlying Law French or early English word in different hands or print traditions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary identifies *faict* as a Law French term meaning "did" or "done," citing Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* — the principal reference work for Law French vocabulary in the common law tradition. Kelham's treatment grounds the term firmly in its Latin parent *factum* and its procedural uses in English legal records.
The broader Law French dictionaries, including those assembled by Rastell and Cowell in earlier centuries, treat *fait* and *faict* interchangeably and confirm the deed/act duality noted above. Cowell's *Interpreter* (1607) addresses *fait* in the context of sealed instruments, connecting the term directly to the law of deeds and specialty contracts — a usage that persisted well into the early modern period.
What historical sources tend to underemphasize is the *en faict / en ley* distinction as a pleading concept; this is better addressed in the Year Book literature and in Fitzherbert's *Natura Brevium* than in the dictionary tradition.
Jurisdictional Note
As a term of Law French, *faict* is essentially confined to the English common law tradition and its early American reception. It does not appear as a live term in any modern jurisdiction; its research relevance is historical and paleographic rather than doctrinal.