Definition
A Law French preposition meaning "out," "out of," or "without." Hors appears not as a standalone legal term but as a prefix or particle in compound Law French phrases that remained in use in English legal pleading and court records through the medieval and early modern periods. The most significant compounds include:
1. Hors de son fee — "Out of his fee." A plea in actions for rent or services by which a defendant alleged that the land in dispute lay outside the plaintiff's fee. The defendant, in effect, denied the plaintiff's seigniorial claim by contesting the territorial extent of his feudal holding.
2. Hors de court — "Out of court." A phrase indicating that a matter or party had been dismissed from or was no longer before the court.
3. Hors de pryson — "Out of prison." Used in statutory and pleading contexts to describe a person no longer in custody.
4. Hors son sen — "Out of his sense or mind." An early description of mental incapacity, appearing in Britton and related sources, relevant to the legal status of a party or the validity of an act.
5. Hors pris (also horspris, horsprise, forsprise) — "Except" or "excepted." Used in conveyancing and statutory language to carve out reservations or exceptions from a grant. The Scots legal tradition translated this phrase directly as "out taken."
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Hors" as a standalone English word is not in standard modern use. It survives in English primarily in the culinary borrowing "hors d'oeuvre" (literally "outside the work"), from French.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not list "hors" as an English entry. The word was recognized as French, appearing in legal and culinary compound phrases only.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is essentially a gap between presence and absence: the word has no independent life in ordinary English at any period. Its legal appearances are entirely artifacts of Law French pleading vocabulary. A researcher encountering "hors" in a modern context is almost certainly reading a legal or historical document, not ordinary prose.
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Common Confusion
Hors and foris are easily conflated because they are functionally synonymous Law French and Latin terms, respectively, meaning "out" or "outside." Burrill notes that the two forms reflect phonetic interchange between initial f and h in Law French derivation from Latin foris. This explains why horsprise and forsprise appear as variant spellings of the same term in historical records. Researchers should search both forms when working with medieval plea rolls, conveyancing documents, or early statute texts.
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Why It Matters in Research
Hors is a navigational term: you will rarely need to look it up for its own sake, but you will frequently need it to decode compound Law French phrases in primary sources. Several practical research traps arise:
First, spelling instability is severe. The h/f interchange means that hors pris, forspris, horsprise, and forsprise are all variant spellings of the same concept. Year Books, plea rolls, and early printed statutes are inconsistent. A full-text search on any single spelling will miss variants.
Second, hors de son sen is an early formulation of mental incapacity doctrine. Researchers tracing the history of legal incompetency, non compos mentis, or testamentary capacity will find this phrase in Britton and related medieval sources. It predates the more systematic Latin vocabulary that later dominated.
Third, hors pris / horsprise is the direct ancestor of the conveyancing exception clause. When reading medieval grants and fee farm rents, the phrase signals a carved-out reservation. Failure to recognize it can produce a misread of what was actually conveyed.
Fourth, hors de court appears in Year Book reports as a formulaic outcome phrase. It signals a procedural result — dismissal or removal from the court's jurisdiction — and should not be confused with substantive rulings on the merits.
Because hors appears almost exclusively in sources predating the eighteenth century, it is most relevant to researchers working in legal history, land tenure, medieval pleading, or early English statutory interpretation.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in agreement on the core definition: hors means "out," "out of," or "without" in Law French. There is no meaningful divergence on this point.
Burrill provides the most useful historical grounding, tracing the term's derivation from Latin foris through the intermediate French fors, and explicitly noting the f/h interchange that produces variant spellings. Burrill also supplies the most compound examples, including the Britton citation for hors son sen and the Statute of Modes for hors de pryson. This material is absent from both editions of Black's.
Black's Second Edition adds the most practically significant compound: hors de son fee, with a reference to Mather v. [partial citation, 12 Pa. Co. Ct. R. 4]. This is notable because it shows the phrase surviving into American pleading practice, not merely as a historical curiosity but as a named plea in Pennsylvania courts.
What the historical dictionaries collectively underemphasize is the conveyancing significance of hors pris. The entry in Black's Second Edition is truncated — the definition trails off mid-sentence — and none of the sources fully develops the connection between hors pris and the English law of exceptions and reservations in deeds.
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Jurisdictional Note
Hors and its compounds are essentially pan-English in origin, appearing wherever English common law and Law French pleading traveled. The Scots legal tradition retained hors pris in the translated form "out taken" in conveyancing usage. American appearances are rare and late, confined largely to jurisdictions with strong early English common law pleading traditions, such as Pennsylvania.
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