Definition
A Law French adverb meaning "thus" or "so." In historical pleading practice, *issint* functioned as a transitional or introductory word in formal oral and written pleadings, signaling that the speaker or pleader was about to set forth a statement in a particular form. It appears most notably in debt pleadings, where special matter was introduced as amounting to a denial of the general issue — a construction sometimes described as "the general issue with an issint." The term carries no substantive legal weight of its own; its function was purely formal and structural within the highly technical pleading forms of early English and Anglo-Norman practice.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The word does not appear in modern English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The word was not part of the English vernacular vocabulary even at that date.
The term has no common-language counterpart at any period. It belongs entirely to Law French, the artificial legal dialect used in English courts from the Norman Conquest through the seventeenth century. A researcher encountering *issint* in a historical source should treat it as a technical marker of pleading form, not as a word carrying any meaning drawn from ordinary usage.
Common Confusion
*Issint* is occasionally confused with the pleading term *issuable*, which appears in the same neighborhood of historical sources. The two are unrelated in function. *Issuable* describes a plea that raises a triable question of fact or law sufficient to determine the action on its merits. *Issint* is merely a formal connective word within a pleading — a structural signal, not a substantive characterization. Rapalje & Lawrence run both terms in close proximity, which has led some researchers to treat them as variants of a single concept. They are not.
Why It Matters in Research
*Issint* is primarily a finding problem rather than a doctrinal problem. Researchers working in plea rolls, Year Books, or early common law treatises will encounter the word as a nearly invisible hinge in the text — easy to skip, but important for understanding where a new statement of pleading begins. Because it introduces the specific form of words the pleader was required to use, its presence signals that what follows is formulaic language of legal significance, not narrative description.
The term is essentially extinct after the abolition of formal pleading requirements in the nineteenth century. Any source using *issint* dates itself to an era of strict oral and written pleading forms, which in England effectively means prior to the Common Law Procedure Act 1852 and its successors. American researchers should note that Law French pleading forms were largely abandoned earlier in the colonies and early republic, so *issint* appears far less frequently in American sources than in English ones.
The Anderson's Dictionary note — that *issint* introduced the formula by which special matter was cast as a denial of the general issue — is the most practically useful gloss for a researcher reading a plea in debt. When you see "the general issue with an issint," the document is telling you that the defendant is not simply traversing the plaintiff's claim outright but is pleading affirmative special matter while preserving the formal structure of a general denial. That distinction mattered for what defenses were available at trial.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries are in agreement on the core definition: *issint* means "thus" or "so" in Law French. There is no meaningful divergence on that point.
The sources diverge in depth of context. Black's (both editions) offers the briefest treatment, identifying the term and noting its role in pleas in debt without elaboration. Burrill provides the most linguistically grounded entry, quoting directly from Britton and Littleton to show the word in authentic context — these quotations are the most useful for a researcher trying to understand how the term actually functioned in practice. Burrill's citation to *Stat. Mod. Lev. Fines* (the Statute of Modes of Levying Fines) places *issint* in conveyancing practice as well as debt pleading, suggesting its use was not confined to a single procedural context.
Anderson adds the most doctrinally specific note, connecting *issint* to the device of pleading special matter as a general-issue denial. Rapalje & Lawrence provide no direct treatment of *issint* itself but situate the closely related term *issuable* in enough detail to clarify the boundary between the two concepts.
No historical dictionary addresses the decline of *issint* as a living pleading term or contextualizes its disappearance. That silence is itself informative: by the time these dictionaries were compiled, the word was already archaic enough to require no discussion of current usage.
Jurisdictional Note
*Issint* is a term of English Law French and appears primarily in English sources. American jurisdictions adopted common law pleading forms selectively, and Law French vocabulary was largely dropped from American practice by the early nineteenth century. Researchers in American sources after roughly 1820 are unlikely to encounter the term in active use.