Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "female." It appears in medieval English legal texts as the feminine counterpart to *masle* (male), used in provisions that applied equally to both sexes or that required the sex of a person or animal to be specified.
The phrase *soit masle soit femele* — "be it male or female" — is the principal recorded usage, appearing in Britton and similar sources of the Anglo-Norman legal tradition.
Common Confusion
*Femele* should not be confused with *feme*, the Law French noun meaning "woman," which carries independent doctrinal weight in the phrases *feme covert* (a married woman) and *feme sole* (an unmarried woman or a married woman trading independently). *Femele* functions as an adjective or noun of classification; *feme* is embedded in terms of art with distinct legal consequences. The surface similarity of the words can mislead readers scanning an unfamiliar text.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal manuscripts, Year Books, or early treatises will encounter Law French throughout. *Femele* is a functional vocabulary term, not a term of art, but failure to recognize it can interrupt comprehension of passages dealing with inheritance, dower rights, villeinage, livestock descriptions, or the sex-based legal disabilities that pervaded early common law. Its significance in a given passage lies not in the word itself but in the surrounding legal context — whether the provision is distinguishing rights, capacities, or statuses on the basis of sex.
The phrase *soit masle soit femele* typically signals an inclusive or comprehensive clause, the medieval equivalent of "whether male or female," often used to confirm that a rule applied without distinction of sex (as in certain rules of descent) or to enumerate all possibilities in a formal grant or legal description.
Researchers should note that Law French spelling was highly variable across manuscripts and across centuries. Variant forms including *femelle*, *femele*, and *famele* may appear, and editors of printed editions do not always normalize spelling consistently. Burrill's single recorded usage points to Britton (c. 13th century), so the term is most likely to appear in sources from the late thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. Later legal writing in English largely displaces the Law French vocabulary, though Latin equivalents (*femina*, *mulier*) persist in formal instruments longer.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill records *femele* economically: a one-line entry identifying it as Law French for "female," with the phrase *soit masle soit femele* and a citation to Britton, chapter 18. No further elaboration is offered, and the entry is representative of how Burrill treats Law French vocabulary terms — identification and illustration, without doctrinal analysis.
The brevity is appropriate here. *Femele* is not a technical legal concept; it is a linguistic building block. The substantive law bearing on female persons in the medieval period — coverture, dower, inheritance of fee tail — is organized in historical sources under those doctrinal headings, not under this vocabulary term. Researchers seeking the legal rules governing women in early English law should treat *femele* as a reading aid and consult the substantive entries on *feme covert*, *feme sole*, dower, and descent.