Definition
An archaic Law French verb meaning to dig, to cut, or to cut down. The term appears in early English legal records and year books as a term of art describing physical acts upon land or timber — particularly the cutting or felling of trees or the breaking of ground. It is not a term in active modern legal use and survives primarily as a relic in medieval plea rolls and year book entries.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who cleans (fows), as in cooking utensils or house maintenance.
Editorial note: The common English word "fower" — a cleaning agent or cleaner — bears no relationship to the Law French legal term. The two words are false cognates. A researcher encountering "fower" in a legal manuscript or year book entry should not import any sense of cleaning or maintenance; the legal term describes acts of physical severance or excavation on land.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a paleographic and philological problem for researchers working with pre-modern English legal records — particularly Year Book materials from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. Its significance arises in at least two contexts:
First, in disputes over waste. Actions of waste in medieval common law turned on whether a tenant had committed acts of physical destruction to the inheritance — cutting timber, digging up soil, or demolishing structures. The verb "fower" may appear in plea rolls or year book arguments describing the specific act complained of. Misreading or mistranslating this term as a noun (a cleaner) or conflating it with unrelated English words could cause a researcher to mischaracterize the nature of the alleged wrong.
Second, in records touching timber rights and profit à prendre. Law French terminology describing acts upon trees and soil is highly specific. "Fower" as meaning to cut down overlaps conceptually with terms like "estovers" (the right to take wood) and "waste" (the prohibition on unauthorized cutting). Researchers should be alert to context: the same physical act could be the subject of a right or the subject of a wrong depending on which party invoked it.
The Yearbook citation in Burrill (M. 7 Edw. III. 1) places the term squarely in the reign of Edward III, a period when Law French was still the dominant language of pleading. Researchers using year book indexes or word-search tools in digitized medieval legal corpora should note that Law French spelling was highly unstable; variant spellings of this term may not surface under a single search.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source for this term, and its entry is brief: "L. Fr. To dig; to cut; to cut down. Yearb. M. 7 Edw. III. 1. Kelham." The reference to Kelham points to Robert Kelham's Domesday Book Illustrated (1788) and his glossary of Law French terms, which was a standard reference for nineteenth-century legal lexicographers working backward into medieval sources. Burrill's reliance on Kelham signals that the term was already archaic by the time of his compilation — drawn from secondary glossary work rather than living legal usage.
No other major historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus (not Bouvier, not Black's early editions) carries an independent entry for this term, suggesting it had dropped from practical legal vocabulary well before the American codification era. Researchers should treat Burrill's entry as the authoritative terminal point for this word's legal career and not expect to find it in nineteenth- or twentieth-century American sources.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the English common law tradition as recorded in Law French year books. It has no recognized counterpart in Scottish, civilian, or American legal usage. Its relevance is confined to historical English legal research.