Definition
An archaic Law French verb meaning "to go out," "to go forth," or "to issue." The term appears in medieval legal texts in various inflected forms: *issist* (he went out), *istra* (shall go out; shall issue), and in compound constructions expressing physical movement or the issuing of a legal instrument. In its broadest medieval usage, *isser* encompasses both literal departure from a place and the more technical legal sense of something proceeding or flowing from a source — the root concept underlying the modern legal term "issue" in its several meanings.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not a current English word; no standard entry.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed. The English derivative "issue" is defined broadly as "the act of passing or flowing out" and "that which passes, flows, or is sent out."
The gap here is directional: *isser* is the verb of motion or emanation from which both the procedural concept of "issuing" process and the property-law concept of "issue" (offspring; proceeds) ultimately descend. Recognizing the verb root clarifies why historically unrelated legal concepts share a single English term.
Common Confusion
Isser is frequently encountered by researchers who mistake it for a proper noun or a scribal error. It is neither. It is a conjugable Law French verb, and its inflected forms (*issist*, *istra*) will not be immediately recognizable without awareness of the root. Researchers should also distinguish it from the English noun "issue," which carries substantive legal meanings (progeny, proceeds, matter in dispute) that *isser* the verb does not itself carry — though both derive from the same conceptual source.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of *isser* is interpretive: encountering it in a medieval or early modern legal text signals a statement about movement out of a place or the emanation of something from a source, not a substantive legal doctrine. The phrase quoted by Burrill — *ne pusse entrer ne isser a sa volunte* (may not go in, or go out at his pleasure) — appears in Britton, the late thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman legal treatise, in a context describing the physical restraint characteristic of villeinage or imprisonment. A researcher working through Britton or comparable plea-roll materials must parse *isser* correctly to understand whether a passage is describing physical confinement, the issuing of a writ, or the running of rents and profits from land.
The inflected forms present a particular trap. *Issist* (past tense, third person singular) and *istra* (future tense) will not appear in most glossaries and may be missed by automated text searches built around the base form. Researchers working in digitized Anglo-Norman legal manuscripts should build search strings that account for these variants. Kelham's *Glossary of Norman and Old French Words* and the Fet Assaver (a thirteenth-century instructional text on legal procedure) are the most direct primary supports for the future form *istra*.
Because Law French was the working language of English common law from roughly the Norman Conquest through the late seventeenth century, verb forms like *isser* are embedded throughout year books, plea rolls, and early treatises. The term connects directly to the procedural vocabulary of writs — a writ "issues" from the court — and to property vocabulary where rents and profits "issue" from land. Tracing that conceptual lineage backward through *isser* helps researchers understand why "issue" in modern law carries such divergent meanings.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the single historical source available here, and its treatment is characteristically concise but useful. Burrill supplies the base form, two inflected forms with their grammatical sense, and three source references: Britton chapter 42 (physical restraint context), Britton chapter 80 (*issist* in past tense), and the Fet Assaver section 48 via Kelham (*istra* in future tense). This is the standard Burrill method — anchoring a Law French term to its textual appearances rather than offering sustained analysis.
What Burrill does not supply is any connection between the verb *isser* and the downstream English legal vocabulary it generated. That synthesis is left entirely to the researcher. No other major historical law dictionary in the standard reference canon — not Jacob's *Law Dictionary*, not Tomlin's, not Bouvier's — treats *isser* as a separate entry, reflecting the term's status as working vocabulary rather than a term of art requiring independent definition.
Jurisdictional Note
As a Law French term, *isser* has no current jurisdictional application. Its relevance is historical and confined to English common law sources and those American authorities that directly inherited or quoted from medieval English legal texts.