FET

Definition

FET is an archaic Law French term meaning "done" or "made." It appears in early common law manuscripts and pleadings as a variant form of *fait* (deed or act), used to indicate that something had been executed or accomplished as a legal matter of fact. In its broader historical usage, *fet* could refer to a fact, deed, matter, or piece of business — carrying the same substantive weight as *fait* in Norman legal French. The term has no operative meaning in modern law and is encountered exclusively in historical legal texts predating the standardization of English as the language of common law pleading.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An initialism for "field effect transistor," an electronic component. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A piece." Marked as obsolete. Neither the modern nor the historical common definition has any relationship to the legal meaning. Researchers encountering *fet* in a legal manuscript should not apply any ordinary English or technical meaning. The term is strictly a Law French artifact.

Common Confusion

FET and FEU are adjacent entries in Burrill's Law Dictionary and are sometimes conflated when reading quickly through early legal dictionaries or manuscript sources. They are unrelated. *Fet* is a verb form or noun equivalent to *fait* (done; a deed or fact). *Feu* (also spelled *few* or *ffew*) is a Scottish land tenure concept derived from *feudum*, denoting a free right to lands granted in exchange for service — a substantive legal institution with continuing relevance in Scots law. The similarity in spelling is coincidental and rooted in different branches of legal French.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working in medieval English legal manuscripts, Year Books, or early common law pleadings will encounter *fet* as a scribal or formulaic variant of *fait*. Its significance is largely paleographic and contextual: recognizing the term prevents misreading a passage as referring to something done or completed when the researcher might otherwise search for a different legal concept. The primary research trap is conflation with *feu* (see COMMON CONFUSION above). Because Burrill places both entries in close proximity and early manuscript hands can make *t* and *u* difficult to distinguish, a researcher must attend carefully to context. *Fet* signals a completed act or fact; *feu* signals a land tenure relationship. For corpus researchers: *Fet* will not appear in post-1730 English legal sources in any operative sense. If the term appears in a later document, it is almost certainly either a direct quotation from an earlier source, a scholarly gloss, or a transcription error. Its presence is a reliable marker of pre-modern material.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the only major historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus to carry an entry for *fet* as a distinct term. Burrill's treatment is brief — citing Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) as authority and noting the equivalence to *fait* — but it is accurate so far as it goes. What Burrill does not address is the functional overlap between *fet* and other Law French past-participial forms (*fait*, *faict*, *fesant*) that appear across different manuscript traditions and regional scribal conventions. Researchers relying on Burrill alone may underestimate how varied the spelling could be in practice. No other standard historical legal dictionary in common use — not Black's, not Bouvier, not Jacob's — carries *fet* as a separate entry, treating the concept, if at all, under *fait* or *fact*. This makes Burrill the primary and effectively sole dictionary resource for this term within the historical legal lexicon.

Jurisdictional Note

*Fet* is a term of English common law history and has no jurisdictional significance in any modern legal system. It does not appear in Scots law sources, where the equivalent concepts derive from different Latin and French roots.

Related Terms