Definition
An obsolete Law French term meaning "greater." Appearing in medieval English legal texts, *greinder* was used in comparative constructions to distinguish between things of larger or superior degree. Its most common documented pairing is *greinder ou meinder* — "greater or less" — a formulaic phrase used in property and tenure contexts to express a range or gradation between two extremes.
The term has no independent legal doctrine attached to it. It functioned as a modifier or comparative particle within the archaic Law French vocabulary of the common law, not as a term of art carrying its own legal meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval or early modern English legal sources — particularly Year Books, Littleton's *Tenures*, or related commentary — will encounter *greinder* (and its variant spellings) as part of stock comparative phrases. The term is not a doctrine to research; it is a linguistic obstacle to reading the source correctly.
The primary trap is misreading the word as a proper noun, a party name, or an unfamiliar legal concept requiring separate investigation. It is none of these. Recognizing *greinder* as the Law French comparative for "greater" allows the researcher to parse the surrounding phrase correctly and move on.
Spelling instability is significant. Burrill records *greignour* and *greynour* as older forms of the same word. Manuscript sources and early printed texts may present any of these spellings, and keyword searching across digitized sources will not reliably surface all variants. Researchers reading continuous text in Law French sources should treat any word beginning *grei-*, *grein-*, or *grein-* as a candidate for this term.
The pairing *greinder ou meinder* mirrors similar comparative constructions across Law French legal writing, where formulaic "greater or lesser" phrasing was used to express the full spectrum of a category — degree of tenure, quantity of estate, or relative obligation — without enumerating every intermediate case.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the sole historical dictionary source available for this term, and his entry is characteristically spare: a one-line gloss ("Greater"), a reference to the phrase *greinder ou meinder* with a citation to Littleton's *Tenures* § 120, and a note from Kelham recording the older variant spellings *greignour* and *greynour*.
Burrill's citation to Littleton § 120 is the most useful anchor. That section of Littleton's *Tenures* addresses conditions in fee simple and uses the greater/lesser construction in discussing the range of conditions that may be attached to a grant. Researchers needing the full context should consult Littleton directly, or Coke's commentary upon it in *Co. Litt.*, where Law French terms of this kind are frequently glossed and explained in the surrounding discussion.
No other standard historical legal dictionaries — not Bouvier, not Black's early editions, not Tomlin — appear to carry a separate entry for *greinder*, reflecting how narrowly the term functioned: as vocabulary, not doctrine.