GRE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

GREAuthored

The Law Mind • 616 words

Definition

"Gre" (also spelled "gree") is an archaic term of French origin that appears in early English legal and general usage to mean a step, grade, or degree — particularly in the sense of a step in a staircase or a gradation in rank or status. In legal contexts it appears rarely and almost exclusively in historical materials, where it carried the sense of a graduated rank or standing, sometimes in connection with feudal hierarchy or procedural gradation.

The term has no active meaning in modern law. It survives only as a curio in historical legal dictionaries and in glossaries of Law French.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Any edition of the Graduate Record Examination or of its Subject Tests.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A step." Marked as obsolete.

The gap here is complete rather than partial. The modern common reader encountering "GRE" in any context will read it as an abbreviation for the standardized graduate school admissions test. The historical legal and common meaning — a step or degree — is entirely extinct in living usage. A researcher who finds "gre" in a historical legal manuscript is looking at a Law French relic, not a reference to any modern institution or concept.

Common Confusion

"Gre" and "degree" share the same root and were sometimes used interchangeably or in close proximity in early materials. The Latin "gradus" and the French "gré" (favor, goodwill) are distinct words that occasionally appear in similar contexts, and transcription errors in historical manuscripts can conflate them. "Gré" in Law French more often meant consent or goodwill (as in "de son gré," of his own accord), while "gre" in the step/grade sense is a separate lexical item. Researchers should not assume the two are equivalent when reading historical pleadings or treatises.

Why It Matters in Research

The practical research significance of "gre" is narrow but specific: it is a term you may encounter when working through Law French materials in the Law Mind corpus, particularly in older English pleading forms, feudal tenure records, or glossaries appended to early treatises. Its chief danger is mistranscription or misreading — it can be confused with "gré" (goodwill/consent) or with abbreviated forms of "degree."

Burrill's entry is fragmentary as reproduced here, and the surrounding context (references to complaints, Mississippi law, and Lee C.J.) suggests the digitized source page contains multiple compressed entries rather than a single coherent definition of "gre." Researchers should treat Burrill's coverage of this term as a pointer to Law French vocabulary rather than a substantive legal definition.

No jurisdictional variation is relevant; the term carries no operative legal weight in any modern jurisdiction.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary acknowledges the deep influence of Law French and Law Latin on English legal vocabulary, noting that these languages "were for so long a period the languages of the law and practice of England." The fragment reproduced here does not develop a full definition of "gre" as a standalone entry; it appears embedded in broader commentary on the peculiarities of legal language derived from French. This is consistent with Webster's 1913 treatment, which marks the word as obsolete and cross-references "gree" (a step) without elaboration.

No other major historical legal dictionary in the Law Mind corpus — not Black's, not Bouvier's as typically represented — devotes a substantive entry to "gre" as an independent legal term, which itself signals its marginal status even within historical practice. The word is more a linguistic artifact than a legal concept with doctrine attached.

GREmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

( 694 ) A cause of See 2 Hilliard's Real Prop. 365. In Misthe essence of a complaint. sissippi it is otherwise. See 26 Mississippi complaint. Lee, C. J. 1 W. Bl. 25. R. 599. (695) French, known as Law Latin and Law French, which were for so long a period the languages of the law and practice of England, and obviously framed on the same principles. Its peculiarities are (1) the conversion of Latin words into Greek, by simply writing them in Greek letters; (2) the mixture of Latin and Greek words together; and (3) the formation of new words by giving to Latin words Greek terminations. Of the first of these peculiarities, (Latin in Greek letters,) Sir William Blackstone has given a few examples in his commentaries. 3 Bl. Com. 321. The following may be added: dovs, (dux.) Cod. 1. 46. 5. Nov. 103, c. 2, 3. Enepedárovs, (exheredatus.) Nov. 1, c. 1, § 4. Kάooov, (casu.) Nov. 2, c. 4. Kovovλápios, (consularis.) Nov. 8. Anyára, (legata.) Cod. 6. 4. 18. podeparwo, (moderator.) Nov. 28, tit. ovykía, (uncia.) Nov. 18, in tit. ovaоúpρovктos, (usufructus.) Nov. 22, c. 33. Taßovlapios, (tabularius.) Nov. 1, c. 2, § 1. paιnóσiros, (præpositus.) Cod. 11. 7. 16. pákTois, (factis.) Nov. 68, in tit. The following present examples of Greek and Latin words, intermixed: τοῦ mortis causa δωρεάν. Nov. 1, c. 1, § 4. είτε bona gratia σταλέντος. Νου. 22, c. 30. εi µù κwλúσɛɛ ó testator. Nov. 18, in tit. And the following exhibit the still more barbarous combinations produced by adding to Latin words Greek terminations: abstinarEvLv. Nov. 89, c. 3. calumnias. Nov. 49.