Definition
An obscure term from Law French, appearing in early English legal records. The precise substantive meaning of *furment* is not firmly established in surviving legal literature; it appears in a single early reference (10 Edw. III) without a clear contextual gloss. Based on its philological relationship to Law French and the limited surviving record, it may refer to a form of provision, supply, or furnishing — possibly grain or foodstuff — but no authoritative legal definition has been recovered from the primary sources.
Researchers should treat this term as a hapax legomenon of the medieval legal record: a word appearing in context but not defined by its sources, and not carried forward into later common law vocabulary.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research risk with *furment* is false cognate confusion: its visual and phonetic similarity to modern English words (furnish, ferment, foment) may tempt a researcher toward an incorrect gloss. None of those modern meanings should be imported without independent corroboration from the surrounding Year Book passage.
The sole surviving reference — 10 Edw. III, cited in Burrill by way of Kelham and Wheatley's Year Book editions — places this term squarely in the early fourteenth century. Researchers working in this period should consult the original Year Book entry directly rather than relying on Burrill's bare citation, as Burrill himself offers no substantive definition, only the source reference. Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) and its glossary of Law French terms is the most productive secondary resource for tracing this word further.
If the term appears in a transcribed document you are analyzing, note the surrounding context carefully: whether it appears in an account roll, a plea, or a writ will materially affect interpretation. Terms in this class often describe obligations of a manorial or provisioning nature — rents, renders, or services owed in kind — and that interpretive frame may be more useful than any single gloss.
This term will not appear in post-medieval legal sources. It has no recognized place in equity, common law pleading, or statutory vocabulary after the early Plantagenet period.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is minimal to the point of opacity: it records only the language designation (Law French), the single Year Book citation (10 Edw. III, f. 50), and cross-references to Kelham and Wheatley's Year Book. Burrill does not define the term, which is itself informative — it signals that even nineteenth-century legal lexicographers, who had access to manuscript and printed Year Book sources unavailable to most modern researchers, could not recover a confident meaning.
No entry for *furment* appears in Jacob's Law Dictionary, Tomlin's Law Dictionary, or Bouvier's Law Dictionary, confirming that the word did not achieve sufficient circulation to enter the general common law lexicon. Its absence from those sources is as significant as its presence in Burrill: the term died with the Law French pleading tradition.
Kelham's Norman French glossary is the most likely source for any further lexical recovery, though *furment* may not appear there either. The word may be a scribal variant or a term of highly local or transactional usage.