FEZ - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

FEZAuthored

The Law Mind • 432 words

Definition

FEZ has no established independent legal meaning. The term appears in Burrill's Law Dictionary not as a defined legal concept but as a truncated fragment within a broader entry on feudal terminology — specifically as an incidental Law French form (L. Fr. Fees) cross-referenced to Kelham's Law French dictionary, appearing in the context of entries for feudum and related fief concepts. It is not a term of art in common law, civil law, or statutory traditions.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A felt hat in the shape of a truncated cone, having a flat top with a tassel attached.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A felt or cloth cap, usually red and having a tassel — a variety of the tarboosh.

The common meaning is entirely unrelated to any legal context. The appearance of "fez" in Burrill is a cross-referential artifact of Law French vocabulary, not a borrowing of the hat's name into legal usage. No meaningful gap between common and legal meaning exists here because there is, properly speaking, no legal meaning at all.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers encountering "fez" in a historical legal source should exercise caution. The appearance of the term in Burrill is almost certainly a reference to the Law French "fees" (plural of fee, in the feudal property sense) rather than to the hat. Historical legal dictionaries, particularly those covering Law French and Latin feudal vocabulary, frequently present abbreviated or fragmentary cross-references that can mislead keyword searches. A corpus search for "fez" in Law Mind sources is unlikely to return substantive legal doctrine; results, if any, are likely to be OCR artifacts, typographical variants of "fee" or "fees," or incidental non-legal usage.

If your research concern is the underlying feudal concept referenced in this passage, the productive path is through the entries for FEUDUM, FEE, FEE TAIL, and FIEF, not through this term.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary does not define "fez" as a legal term. The fragment in which it appears reads: "L. Fr. Fees. Kelham." — a bare cross-reference indicating that the Law French equivalent of the Latin feudal term being discussed is "fees," with Kelham's Normand-French Dictionary cited as authority. This is the entirety of the legal dictionary record for this term. No other shelf source in the Law Mind corpus treats "fez" as a legal term of art. The historical record is, in a word, empty.

FEZmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

( 620 ) the Corpus Juris Civilis, under the title of Feudorum Libri, or Consuetudines Feudorum. 3 Kent's Com. ub. sup. 1 Mackeld. Civ. Law, 94, Kaufmann's note. Feudum talliatum ; a mutilated or truncated fief, or inheritance, from which the heirs general were cut off. Craig Jus. Feud. lib. 1, tit. 10, s. 24, 25. 2 Bl. Com. 112, note (m.) Hence the English fee tail, (q. v.) L. Fr. Fees. Kelham. Actions; things done, (faits.) Id. A son, (fitz.) Id. Times, (foitz.) Id. Ff, or ff. A character frequently used by old writers, (and by some modern ones, as Blackstone,) in quoting the Digests or Pandects of the civil law. Supposed, by the majority of jurists, to have originated