Definition
An old English legal term meaning an exception, reservation, or exclusion. Used in conveyances and leases to carve out something from the grant — that is, to take out or hold back a particular item, right, or parcel from the broader transfer being made. The term appears in variant forms including FORPRISE, FOREPRISE, and FORSPRISE, and in Latin as FORPRISA or FORPRISUM. The phrase "excepted and foreprised" was a standard formula in older English instruments where the grantor wished to exclude something from the operation of the conveyance.
Common Language
This is pure legal jargon with no meaningful counterpart in modern or historical common usage. The term was never in general circulation and is absent from standard dictionaries. Omitted accordingly.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with pre-modern English conveyances, leases, or land grants will encounter this term as part of standard drafting formulae rather than as a term of art with independent legal consequence. Its significance is almost entirely textual: when you see "excepted and foreprised" in a historical instrument, the operative word doing the legal work is "excepted." Forpris, forprise, and their variants are essentially intensifiers or doublets reinforcing the exception — a common drafting habit in older English legal instruments that paired English and Law French terms for the same concept.
The variant spellings (forpris, forprise, foreprise, forsprise) and Latin forms (forprisa, forprisum) mean that keyword searches in historical corpora will miss occurrences unless all forms are queried. Manuscript sources may present additional spelling variation. Researchers should not assume a single standardized form.
Because the term functioned within conveyancing boilerplate, it rarely generates independent judicial interpretation. Its meaning was understood by the parties and drafters through practice rather than litigation, which means you are unlikely to find case law defining it. The primary evidence for its meaning comes from treatise and dictionary sources, not court records.
The term has no continuing role in modern conveyancing. If encountered in a modern instrument, it would be a deliberate archaism or transcription error, and the surrounding context — particularly the companion word "excepted" — should control interpretation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus covering this term, and its entry is concise but sufficient. Burrill traces the Law French roots (for, meaning "out," and prise, meaning "a taking") and cross-references the Latin forms, which is useful for researchers moving between vernacular and Latin legal records. The entry in Brittain (cited by Burrill as Britt. c. 5, 34) is among the earliest English legal texts to use the term, placing its practical currency in the medieval period.
What Burrill does not address — and what no historical dictionary in the standard shelf fully develops — is the functional relationship between forpris and the broader doctrine of exceptions and reservations in conveyancing. That doctrine has its own substantial history; forpris is simply one of the vocabulary items through which it was expressed in a particular period and drafting tradition. Researchers needing the doctrinal substance should pursue "exception" and "reservation" in their conveyancing context rather than expecting forpris to carry independent analytical weight.
No significant divergence exists among historical sources on the meaning of this term, because so few sources address it. Burrill's account is essentially the field.