HOM - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

HOMAuthored

The Law Mind • 817 words

Definition

"Hom" does not function as an independent legal term of art. In Burrill's Law Dictionary, the fragment "hom" appears as part of the compound term "homage" or related derivatives (homme, hominium), all stemming from the Latin homo (man) and the feudal vocabulary of tenure, allegiance, and service. Researchers encountering "hom" in historical legal manuscripts are almost certainly reading a truncated or abbreviated form of one of those compound terms.

The most significant legal derivatives include:

1. HOMAGE (homagium): The solemn ceremony by which a feudal tenant acknowledged tenure and fealty to a lord. The tenant knelt, placed his hands between the lord's hands, declared himself the lord's man, and swore fidelity. Homage created a reciprocal bond: the tenant owed service; the lord owed protection.

2. HOMME (L. Fr.) / HOMO (Lat.): Man, in the sense of vassal or tenant. Appearing in feudal instruments as a designation of the person bound by tenure. "Homme de foy" indicated a man bound by fealty; "homme de corps" (homme de corps propre) designated a serf or bondman.

3. HOMINE REPLEGIANDO: A common law writ directing the release of a prisoner on sureties, analogous in function to habeas corpus but with distinct procedural characteristics.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An alternative form of "haoma," a sacred plant of ancient Iranian religious practice. No legal content.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; "hom" does not appear as a standalone English word in Webster's 1913.

Editorial note: The legal appearances of "hom" are entirely unrelated to any common English word or the Wiktionary definition. Researchers should treat "hom" in legal sources exclusively as an abbreviation or prefix for feudal and common law compound terms.

Common Confusion

The abbreviation "hom" in manuscript sources and early printed abridgments is most frequently confused with the standalone term "homo" (Lat., man) used in a generic rather than feudal sense. In many Year Book and plea roll contexts, homo denotes simply "a person" without any feudal connotation. The feudal meaning of homme or homo — specifically, a tenant bound by homage — is narrower and should not be assumed without surrounding textual support confirming a tenurial relationship.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should treat "hom" as a red flag for abbreviation. Medieval and early modern legal manuscripts routinely truncated common terms; "hom" appearing mid-text almost always resolves to homage, homagium, homme, or homo depending on context. Misreading the abbreviation as a standalone term or assigning it the wrong expansion can distort the meaning of entire clauses in conveyancing documents and feudal records.

The distinction between homage (the ceremony, giving rise to reciprocal obligations) and fealty (the oath alone, without the ceremony) is critical in reading tenure documents. Many historical sources use the abbreviated forms interchangeably, but the legal consequences differed: homage could not be reserved to a stranger to the fee; fealty could be owed to multiple lords.

Researchers examining colonial American land grants — particularly those granted "in free and common socage, as of the manor of East Greenwich" (the standard formula adopted by the Crown in American charters) — will encounter hom- derivatives frequently. Burrill's snippet referencing "hold of East Greenwich" places this term squarely in that colonial tenure context. Understanding that homage was largely abolished or transformed in those grants (which explicitly substituted socage for knight-service) is essential to reading those instruments accurately.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary treats "hom" only as a fragment appearing within larger entries. The surrounding passage in the source material concerns colonial land tenure and registry of "holds," pointing to the feudal vocabulary of tenure rather than any independent meaning of "hom." Burrill does not define "hom" as a self-contained term.

Historical dictionaries generally are more useful here for what they collect around the term than for the term itself: entries on homagium, homme, and homo in Burrill, Jacob's Law Dictionary, and Tomlin's Law Dictionary together give a full picture of the feudal man-lord vocabulary. Cowell's Interpreter (1607) remains one of the most thorough early treatments of homage and its ceremony.

What historical dictionaries often miss: the procedural writ de homine replegiando receives uneven treatment across the shelf — Burrill covers it, but older abridgments sometimes omit it entirely or confuse it with mainprise.

Jurisdictional Note

Homage as a tenurial ceremony was effectively abolished in England by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660, which converted most military tenures to free and common socage. American colonial and early state law never re-established the ceremony; the term survives in historical land title research but carries no operative legal force in any current U.S. jurisdiction.

HOMmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1870

(25) and hold of East Greenwich." Colony Any writing, deed, document or memoLaws, Nov. 15, 1636. "That a convenient randum wholly in the handwriting of a form for registry of men's particular holds be here inserted," &c. Id. ibid. To HOLD. [Lat. tenere; L. Fr. tener.] To bind; to be of legal force or efficacy. See Tenere. To judge or deem; to be of opinion; to decide. "The court held," &c. See Tenere. Tene To be the grantee or tenant of another; to take or have an estate from another. Properly, to have an estate on condition of paying rent, or performing service. Tenere, Tenendum, Tenure, Tenant. To have in possession; to possess. Holder, Tenant. See See (26) man. Edw. II. The older form given by Bracton is in somewhat different language, though both commenced with the same words: Devenio vester homo; (L. Fr. jeo deveigne vostre home,) from which the term homage itself is derived. Bract. fol. 80. Britt. c. 68. See Fleta, lib. 3, c. 16, §20. Co. Litt. 64 b. See Devenio. That homage was much more than a mere ceremony, is clear from Bracton's definition of it, (see Homagium,) who also observes that the putting of the tenant's hands between those of the lord denoted, on the part of the lord, protection, defence, and warranty, and on the part of the tenant, reverence and subjection. Bract. fol. 80. Homage is now commonly regarded in the light of an abject and servile ceremony, importing a degree of humiliation on the part of the tenant degrading to the character of a freeThere was one part of the ceremonial, however, which places it in a somewhat less odious light. At the conclusion of the homage, the lord was bound to kiss the tenant, and this, according to Britton, could never be dispensed with, whoever the lord might be; whether the king himself or any other, whether male or female, clerk or layman, old or young; and whoever the tenant might be, poor or rich, healthy or sick, ugly or fair, (poure ou ryche, lede ou bele.) Britt. c. 68. In the reign of Henry (27) New Recop. b. 2, tit. 19, c. 3, § 1. Substantial citizens. Schmidt's Civ. Law, 216. Corresponding with the boni or probi homines of the old common law.