Definition
An obsolete Law French term meaning to haste, hasten, or dispatch. Appearing in early English legal texts, *haster* carried the sense of expediting or pressing forward a matter with speed. The closely associated form *hastif* (also rendered *hastyfe*) served as the adjectival counterpart, meaning hasty, inconsiderate, or immature — describing an act or judgment made without sufficient deliberation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Haster* does not appear as a standard entry in modern English dictionaries; it survives only in archaic or dialectal contexts as a variant of "to hasten."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not independently listed; the root concept appears under *hasten* — to move or act with speed; to be quick or urgent.
The legal distinction worth noting is that *haster* was not merely a descriptor of speed but carried procedural weight in early English practice: to *haster* a matter was to formally press it toward dispatch, while its adjectival form *hastif* carried a negative valuation — implying a defect in deliberation. Speed in the legal sense could be either a virtue (efficient dispatch) or a vice (immature judgment), and these two poles are captured in the paired terms.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *haster* or *hastif* in primary sources will almost always be working with Britton (*Britt.*), the late thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman legal text that ranks among the earliest systematic expositions of English common law. Both terms appear in chapter 99 of Britton and should be read in that context.
Two research traps arise. First, *hastif* carries an evaluative charge that modern translation can flatten. Rendering it simply as "hasty" misses the implication of procedural or moral deficiency — an act described as *hastif* in a legal record was likely being criticized, not merely described. Second, because Law French terms of this period were often inconsistently spelled across manuscripts, variant spellings (*hastif*, *hastyfe*, *hastife*) may appear without cross-reference in older indexes. Researchers should search broadly on the root rather than any single orthographic form.
The term's significance is primarily lexical and historical rather than doctrinal; it does not anchor a legal test or survive into modern practice. Its value lies in unlocking the procedural vocabulary of early English legal texts and in understanding how medieval English law balanced the imperative of efficient dispatch against the requirement of mature deliberation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary authority here, and its entry is spare: it supplies the definition, the Law French origin, and the Britton citation without elaboration. Burrill links *haster* and *hastif* as companion terms, which is useful — the noun/verb form and the adjectival form illuminate each other.
No other major historical legal dictionaries in common reference (Jacob's Law Dictionary, Bouvier's, Black's early editions) appear to carry independent entries for *haster* or *hastif*, which reflects both the term's archaism and its narrow textual home in Britton. Researchers should not expect confirmation from parallel dictionary sources and should treat Burrill's citation to Britton chapter 99 as the authoritative point of origin.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is any sustained discussion of how *hastif* functioned evaluatively — whether in pleading, in describing judicial conduct, or in characterizing a party's procedural behavior. That contextual dimension must be recovered from Britton itself.