Definition
In older English legal sources, "Hun" appears as a truncated or variant form of *Hutesium* — the Latin term for hue and cry. The reference is to the ancient common-law obligation requiring inhabitants of a locality to raise an immediate alarm and give pursuit upon the commission of a felony, particularly theft. The term as a standalone legal entry is largely an artifact of abbreviated citation style in early legal dictionaries, where "Hun." served as a shorthand pointer to the fuller doctrine of *hutesium* or hue and cry.
The underlying institution it references — hue and cry — was a formal mechanism of communal law enforcement in medieval England. When a felony was committed, the victim or a witness was obliged to raise an outcry; neighbors were then legally required to join the pursuit. Failure to participate could result in communal penalty. The practice fell out of formal use in England as professional law enforcement developed, though echoes of it persist in the legal concept of citizen's arrest and in the common-law duty to respond to a constable's call for assistance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An affectionate abbreviation of "honey"; also, colloquially, a woman perceived as brash or working-class, or one who promotes multi-level marketing schemes on social media.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One of a warlike nomadic people of Northern Asia who, under Attila in the 5th century, invaded and conquered much of Europe.
Neither the modern colloquial sense nor the historical ethnic designation has any connection to the legal term. The legal "Hun" is purely a bibliographic abbreviation pointing to a Latin legal concept. Researchers encountering "Hun." in a Burrill citation or similar historical source should read it as shorthand for *Hutesium* and the hue and cry doctrine — not as a reference to a people or a term of affection.
Common Confusion
"Hun" as it appears in Burrill and comparable historical law dictionaries is easily misread as a typographical error, a personal name abbreviation, or a stray reference. It is neither. It functions as a compressed cross-reference to the Latin *Hutesium* and should be followed to that entry for substantive content. Researchers should also distinguish it from the unrelated abbreviation "Hund." sometimes used for hundred (the administrative division), which appears in similar historical sources and can cause confusion in the same textual neighborhood.
Why It Matters in Research
This entry is primarily a navigational artifact. Its research value is as a signpost: if you encounter "Hun." in a historical legal dictionary, treatise, or case report, follow it to *Hutesium* or hue and cry. Do not treat it as a substantive independent doctrine.
The hue and cry doctrine itself has genuine research relevance in historical English law, colonial American law, and in tracing the development of citizen's arrest and posse comitatus obligations. Burrill's truncated entry is characteristic of 19th-century legal dictionary practice, where Latin terms were often cited in abbreviated form with Britton (*Britt.*) or Bracton as the primary authority. The citation to *Britt. c. 27* points to Britton, the 13th-century Anglo-French legal treatise attributed to John le Breton — a legitimate and frequently cited source for the older common law on this subject.
Researchers working in Law Mind's historical corpus should be alert to the difference between entries that define a concept and entries — like this one — that serve purely as index pointers to fuller treatment elsewhere.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is a single-sentence fragment, not a self-contained definition. Its substance is entirely in what it points toward: the *Hutesium* entry, and through that, the broader doctrine of hue and cry. Burrill notes that hue and cry had been discontinued in England by the time of his writing, having been displaced by ordinary complaint to a peace officer, while acknowledging that a residual form survived in the outcry raised upon a thief's escape. This is accurate as a historical matter and consistent with what Bracton, Britton, and later Blackstone record about the institution's decline. No other historical dictionary sources were provided for this term, and the entry does not warrant fabricating comparative analysis across absent sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See: HUE AND CRY