Definition
A unit of weight in old English law, measuring above seventy pounds, referenced in the statute 51 Hen. III. The term appears in historical English weights-and-measures law and is now wholly obsolete. Its precise scope was narrow: it designated a specific quantity, particularly in the context of lead, and derived its authority from a single medieval statutory reference. No modern legal meaning survives.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not recorded in modern English dictionaries as a common word.
Historical common usage (Latin): From the Latin formella, a diminutive of forma, meaning a small form, mold, or shape — used in late Latin for a baking mold or a mold for pressing cheese (e.g., "casei" in the Vulgate; culinary use in Apicius).
The gap between the Latin common meaning and the English legal meaning is sharp and instructive. In ordinary Latin usage, formella referred to something small — a little mold or form. In English statutory law, the term was repurposed to designate a weight of more than seventy pounds, likely by way of the physical container or mold in which a measured quantity of material (particularly lead) was cast or shaped. The legal meaning does not preserve the diminutive sense of the Latin original.
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Why It Matters in Research
Formella is a terminal-depth term: it appears in the historical dictionaries solely as a gloss on a single statutory source (51 Hen. III, the Assize of Weights and Measures) and has no downstream common law development. Researchers encountering the word in medieval English records, commercial documents, or treatises on weights and measures should treat it as a direct statutory artifact rather than a term with interpretive case history.
Two research traps are worth flagging. First, the Latin derivation (small mold or form) may mislead a researcher unfamiliar with how medieval English law absorbed and repurposed Latin commercial vocabulary — the word sounds diminutive but represents a substantial quantity. Second, the dictionary entries for formella in both editions of Black's are truncated mid-page, appearing immediately before the entry for FORMER ADJUDICATION. Researchers scanning facsimile or digitized versions of Black's should be aware that the formella entry is complete as reproduced; the adjacent term is not a continuation.
The statute 51 Hen. III is the Assize of Weights and Measures (1266), one of the foundational English statutes on standardized commercial weights. Formella appears in the context of lead weights alongside other archaic units such as the fotmal. The two terms are closely related and may appear in proximity in primary sources; see FOTMAL under Related Terms.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries are in close agreement: formella denotes a weight of above (or more than) seventy pounds, referenced to 51 Hen. III, with Cowell's Interpreter cited as the secondary authority. Burrill adds the specification that the weight pertained to lead and situates the term more precisely within the statute of weights and measures. Bouvier and both Black's editions track Cowell almost verbatim.
None of the source dictionaries provide interpretive analysis beyond the statutory reference. The entries function as pure glosses — they confirm the word's existence in English legal usage and supply its approximate quantity, but offer no case law, no contextual elaboration, and no discussion of how the unit related to contemporaneous commercial practice. Historical dictionary coverage of this term is, in that sense, at its ceiling. Researchers needing more will need to consult the statute directly and scholarship on medieval English metrology.
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Jurisdictional Note
Formella is an English law term with no recorded reception in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. It has no jurisdictional variation because it was never in active use outside the specific statutory context of medieval English commercial regulation.
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