Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "to make." Used in early English legal sources as a variant spelling, with Kelham noting its equivalence to the French *faire* (to make, to do). The term appears in old pleadings and Year Book materials as part of compound expressions and formulaic legal phrases. It carries no independent substantive legal meaning and is not in active use in modern legal writing.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete spelling of "fear" (the emotion of apprehension or dread).
Historical common usage: In earlier English orthography, "feare" was a standard spelling of the English noun and verb "fear," representing the emotional state of apprehension in the face of danger or threat.
The orthographic overlap here is a genuine research trap. When a researcher encounters "feare" in a historical legal manuscript or printed source, the word may be the Law French verbal term meaning "to make" — entirely unrelated to apprehension or dread — or it may simply be an archaic English spelling of "fear." Context, and particularly the surrounding language (Law French vs. English), is the only reliable guide.
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Common Confusion
Researchers should distinguish three overlapping forms:
1. FEARE (Law French): "to make" — a verbal element in formulaic legal phrases. Equivalent to FAIRE.
2. FEARE (archaic English): obsolete spelling of the emotion "fear."
3. FEAR (modern legal usage): a substantive concept in criminal law (duress, self-defense), contracts (coercion), and immigration law (well-founded fear of persecution), entirely distinct from the Law French verbal term.
These are false cognates in a historical legal corpus. The visual similarity between the Law French *feare* and the English *fear* has no conceptual connection.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is relevant almost exclusively as a reading aid for historical sources — Year Books, early English reports, and Norman-era legal formularies. Researchers working in pre-modern common law materials may encounter "feare" as part of compound constructions in the same way they encounter "faire" or "fer," all variants of the same Law French root.
The principal research risk is misreading: a researcher encountering "feare" in an early printed law book may incorrectly read it as a reference to the English legal concept of fear (relevant to duress, coercion, or menace), when in context it is simply a conjugated or gerundive form of the Law French "to make." This error could produce a false positive when searching for historical treatments of fear-based legal doctrines.
For researchers in the Law Mind corpus, "feare" is unlikely to appear in any modern primary source. When it appears, it will be in facsimile reprints, glossaries of Law French, or Kelham-derived lexicographic materials. Treat it as a lexicographic artifact, not a live legal concept.
The modern legal concept of "fear" as an operative element — particularly in immigration law's well-founded fear standard — is a wholly separate body of doctrine with no etymological or conceptual lineage running through this Law French term.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's treatment is minimal and entirely cross-referential: he defines the term as Law French for "to make," cites Kelham, and redirects to FAIRE. This is consistent with how Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) handles the term — as one of several variant spellings of a common Law French verbal root. No substantive legal doctrine attaches to the word itself in the historical dictionaries.
What the historical dictionaries do not address — and could not have anticipated — is the modern immigration law doctrine built around a cognate English word. The well-founded fear test in refugee and asylum law uses "fear" as a term of art, but that usage is entirely modern, statutory, and regulatory in origin, and has no connection to the Law French *feare*.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Asylum — Persecution Standard, Past Persecution Presumption, and the Well-Founded Fear Test (Law Mind Immigration Law Encyclopedia): Relevant not because *feare* the Law French term connects to asylum doctrine, but because researchers arriving at this dictionary entry may be seeking the legal treatment of "fear" in the immigration context. The well-founded fear standard is the operative location for that doctrine.
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