Definition
In law, frigidity is a historical term for impotence — specifically, the incapacity for sexual intercourse. As used in legal contexts, the term referred to a physical condition that rendered a party unable to consummate a marriage, and it served as a recognized ground for annulment in ecclesiastical and, later, civil matrimonial law. All four source dictionaries in this corpus define the term identically and by cross-reference only: "Impotence." The legal content of FRIGIDITY is therefore coextensive with the legal content of IMPOTENCE, and researchers should treat this entry as a pointer to that term rather than a standalone doctrine.
The term carried a narrower and more specific meaning than its common usage suggests. It did not refer to emotional coldness, lack of affection, or low sexual desire — meanings that the word carries in modern clinical and colloquial use. Legally, frigidity meant structural or functional incapacity for the act of intercourse itself.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Frigidity means coldness of feeling, manner, or quality; lack of ardor or animation; or, in a sexual context, lack of sex drive or an inability to become aroused or achieve sexual satisfaction.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The condition or quality of being frigid; coldness; want of warmth... Want of ardor, animation, vivacity, etc.; coldness of affection or of manner; dullness... Want of heat or vigor; as, the frigidity of old age."
The gap between common and legal meaning here is significant in both directions. Historically, the common word encompassed emotional and temperamental coldness far beyond anything the law recognized. Today, clinical usage has narrowed toward sexual dysfunction — including low desire and arousal disorders — that still does not map cleanly onto the legal definition, which required incapacity for the physical act, not merely diminished interest in it. A researcher encountering "frigidity" in a historical legal document should read it as a synonym for impotence in the physical, consummation-centered sense, not as a reference to desire, affect, or temperament.
Common Confusion
Frigidity vs. Impotence vs. Sterility: These three terms are frequently conflated in both historical and modern sources. In legal usage, impotence (and frigidity as its synonym) referred to inability to perform the act of intercourse — a consummation-based incapacity. Sterility referred to inability to procreate. The two conditions are legally distinct: a sterile person could consummate a marriage; an impotent person could not. Historically, only impotence/frigidity voided a marriage through annulment; sterility generally did not. Researchers working in annulment records, ecclesiastical court files, or early domestic relations treatises must hold this distinction firmly.
Why It Matters in Research
Frigidity as a standalone legal term is essentially extinct in modern law. No contemporary statute or judicial opinion uses it as a term of art. Its sole legal function was as an archaic synonym for impotence in the matrimonial context, and it appears in the corpus almost exclusively in historical dictionary entries and nineteenth-century treatise literature.
Researchers have three navigational tasks when encountering this term:
First, translate immediately to IMPOTENCE. The doctrine, the case law, the procedural history, and the jurisdictional variation all live under that heading. Frigidity is a label, not a separate doctrine.
Second, watch for gendered usage in historical sources. In practice, "frigidity" was frequently applied to women, while "impotence" was more often applied to men, even though both terms carried the same legal meaning. This gendered deployment reflects the social assumptions of the period rather than any legal distinction, but it can create indexing inconsistencies in historical archives and ecclesiastical records.
Third, be alert to the modern clinical divergence. Post-twentieth-century psychological and medical literature uses "frigidity" (or, more currently, "hypoactive sexual desire disorder") to mean something quite different from physical incapacity for intercourse. If a researcher is working with twentieth-century or later sources that use "frigidity" in a legal or quasi-legal context — expert testimony, psychological evaluations in divorce proceedings, legislative history — the term may be carrying its clinical meaning rather than its classical legal one. The contexts are not interchangeable.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four dictionaries in this corpus — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier — define FRIGIDITY in a single word: "Impotence." Each cites "Johnson," a reference to Samuel Johnson's legal dictionary rather than any judicial authority. This unanimous, cross-edition consistency confirms that frigidity was never an independent legal doctrine. It was a vocabulary item, not a legal category.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide — and what researchers should not expect to find here — is any substantive treatment of the annulment doctrine itself, the procedural requirements for proving frigidity or impotence before an ecclesiastical or civil tribunal, or the distinction between ante-nuptial and post-nuptial incapacity. Those matters are carried under IMPOTENCE and related matrimonial headings.
The Rapalje & Lawrence and Bouvier entries are notable for what surrounds frigidity on the page: FRILING (a freeman born) and FRIPPER (one who dresses old clothes to resell). The alphabetical proximity is coincidental but serves as a useful reminder that historical dictionaries were organized lexically, not topically — the absence of extended treatment here reflects alphabetical placement, not legal insignificance.
Jurisdictional Note
Because frigidity was purely a synonym for impotence, jurisdictional variation tracks the impotence doctrine rather than any independent rule. Ecclesiastical courts in England and canon law traditions governed these questions before civil matrimonial jurisdiction developed. American states varied in whether impotence was a ground for annulment, divorce, or both, and some states required proof that the condition existed at the time of marriage.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Impotence — for the full doctrinal treatment of physical incapacity as a ground for annulment.
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Annulment — for the broader framework of void and voidable marriages within which this doctrine operated.