Definition
An obsolete term appearing in old English law, meaning "a hill." Used historically in land descriptions and boundary demarcations to denote a naturally elevated landform. The word survives in English place names but has no continuing legal currency. The second edition of Black's also records "hoo" as a Latin demonstrative root element ("this"), appearing in several Latin legal phrases used in classical and medieval legal writing: hoc intuitu (with this expectation), hoc loco (in this place), hoc nomine (in this name), hoc titulo (under this title), hoc voce (under this word).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An alternate form of "how."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): An exclamation of triumphant joy (cf. Shakespeare); also an obsolete form related to "ho"; additionally appears as a suffix variant of "-hood," denoting state, condition, or quality (manhood, childhood).
The legal meaning — a hill, used in describing land — bears no relationship to any of the common usages. Researchers encountering the term in old English conveyances or boundary descriptions should not read it as an exclamation or a suffix element; it is a topographical descriptor.
Common Confusion
The second edition of Black's conflates two distinct senses under one headword: the Old English topographical term (a hill) and Latin demonstrative phrases beginning with "hoc." These are unrelated. A researcher reading a medieval land description and one reading a Latin legal maxim are working with entirely different material, even if both encounter the word "hoo" in their source. The Latin "hoc" phrases are cross-references pointing to entries under their full phrase form, not independent definitions of "hoo" as a Latin term.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with early English land records, manorial surveys, or boundary perambulations may encounter "hoo" in descriptive passages identifying natural landmarks. It functions as a common noun in those contexts — a hill — not as a proper name, though many English place names incorporate it (Hoo, Strood Hoo, etc.), which can cause confusion when the same word appears partly as a toponym and partly as a generic geographic descriptor in the same document.
The reference to Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 5b) is the anchor citation across all three historical sources. Researchers using this dictionary entry to locate primary authority should go directly to that passage in Coke's commentary on Littleton's Tenures, where the term appears in the context of describing seisin and the description of land.
The Latin phrase cluster (hoc intuitu, hoc loco, etc.) found in the second edition of Black's is more useful as a pointer to those individual phrases, which have their own meaning in legal Latin. None of the three dictionary sources develops those phrases beyond a brief gloss; researchers needing fuller treatment should look under each phrase independently.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical sources agree on the core meaning: "a hill," in old English law, citing Coke on Littleton. Bouvier and the first edition of Black's are nearly identical in their brevity. The second edition of Black's expands the entry to include the Latin "hoc" phrases, which the other two omit entirely. It is unclear whether the second edition's editors intended the Latin material as a supplement to the English meaning or as a correction; the entry structure suggests an accretion rather than a deliberate reorganization. None of the three sources provides any context for how frequently or in what classes of documents "hoo" appeared, nor do they distinguish between its use as a common noun and its survival in place names.