Definition
In Anglo-Norman legal French, *gaster* means to waste or to lay waste — specifically, to commit the tort or wrong of waste upon land or its appurtenances. The term appears in early English legal records derived from the Norman French administrative and legal vocabulary that dominated English law following the Conquest. It carries no independent doctrinal weight as a standalone term; it is encountered primarily as a verb in early law French texts and glosses describing the act of waste, particularly waste committed upon woodlands (*gaster le boys*: to waste the woods).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In modern English, *gaster* refers either to the stomach or abdomen, or more specifically in entomology, to the enlarged rear portion of the abdomen in hymenopterous insects such as ants.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 lists *gaster* as an obsolete form of the verb "to gast," meaning to frighten or terrify — drawn from literary usage in Beaumont and Fletcher.
The legal term *gaster* shares no meaningful connection with either modern or historical common usage. In law French, it is a verb of destruction, not anatomy or fright. A researcher encountering the word in an early legal manuscript should not import any of its non-legal senses; the Anglo-Norman root is entirely distinct in both form and function from the Latin *gaster* (belly) and the archaic English *gast* (to frighten).
Why It Matters in Research
*Gaster* is a term a researcher will encounter only in primary sources of considerable age — predominantly manuscripts, year books, or early treatises composed in or closely reflecting law French, such as Britton (*Britt.*), from which Burrill draws his citation. It will not appear in modern statutory or case law under this form.
The key research trap is orthographic and linguistic: law French texts are notoriously inconsistent in spelling, and *gaster* may appear alongside variants or may be confused with superficially similar Latin or English terms. A researcher working in early English land law records should treat *gaster* as a functional equivalent of the Latin *vastare* and the English "to waste," but should not assume it carries all the technical refinements that "waste" later developed under common law pleading — the term predates much of that doctrinal elaboration.
The phrase *gaster le boys* (to waste the woods) is the most legally significant collocation. Waste of woodland was a recognized category of harm under early English land law, actionable by reversioners and remaindermen, and this phrase signals that the underlying substantive concern is the law of waste — not merely casual destruction. Researchers tracing the early history of the doctrine of waste should note that law French sources like Britton use *gaster* where later common law pleaders would use "waste" or *vastum fecit*.
Cross-corpus connections: *Gaster* bridges into the broader Law Mind materials on waste, on the rights of tenants for life or years, and on the early history of the action of waste. Researchers should follow this term into its doctrinal context rather than treating it as an isolated vocabulary item.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the sole historical dictionary source available here, and his entry is characteristically spare: he provides the language designation (L. Fr.), the definition (to waste), and two citations to Britton. This is typical of Burrill's treatment of law French terms — he identifies and glosses them but does not develop their doctrinal history.
What Burrill does not supply — and what no single historical law dictionary fully addresses — is the relationship between the law French vocabulary of waste and the subsequent development of waste doctrine in common law pleading and equity. The term *gaster* itself fell out of active use as law French gave way to English in legal proceedings; by the time of the great common law dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the operative term was "waste" in English, and law French relics like *gaster* survived only in antiquarian glossaries. Researchers should not expect to find *gaster* developed in Coke, Blackstone, or later authorities — they will have moved entirely to the English and Latin vocabulary of waste.
The Latin dictionary entry (*gaster* as belly, from the Greek *gastēr*) is etymologically unrelated to the law French legal term and should not be imported into legal analysis.
Jurisdictional Note
*Gaster* is a term of English legal history and has no independent existence in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. Its relevance is confined to the study of early English land law as recorded in law French sources.