Definition
A Latin maxim of old English law meaning "it lies in the mouth." The phrase describes something that rests in the oral declaration or statement of a party — that is, a matter whose legal effect depends on what is spoken or averred rather than on a written instrument or external proof. In its historical context, the phrase referred to certain facts or conditions that could be established or defeated solely by the word of the party in whose mouth the matter lay.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow archaic maxim with essentially no surviving doctrinal life in modern common law systems. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal sources and in the dictionaries that catalogued that period's Latin formulae. Its presence in a document is a reliable signal that the surrounding text is drawing on Fleta or a comparable treatise of the thirteenth or fourteenth century.
The sole authoritative citation across all three historical dictionaries points to Fleta, lib. 5, c. 5, § 49 — a late thirteenth-century English legal compilation written in the style of Bracton. Any researcher pursuing the substantive meaning of this maxim must go to that source directly. The dictionary entries do not elaborate on the legal context in which the phrase appears in Fleta, which limits their independent value. Researchers working in medieval English property law, pleading, or oral conveyance will find the most traction by treating the maxim as a pointer to Fleta rather than a self-contained rule.
There are no meaningful jurisdictional variants, no modern statutory recurrence, and no traceable line of cases citing the phrase as operative authority. Do not expect to find it in American legal sources.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's are in complete agreement: all three render the translation identically ("it lies in the mouth"), all three label it old English law, and all three cite only Fleta lib. 5, c. 5, § 49 without additional commentary. This uniformity suggests that each subsequent dictionary drew directly from its predecessor rather than conducting independent research into the primary source. The result is a chain of derivative entries rather than independent corroboration.
Burrill's identifies the phrase as "L. Lat." (Law Latin), which is the accurate classification — it is the artificial Latin of the medieval English legal records rather than classical Latin composition. This is a minor but useful precision that Black's and Bouvier's omit.
What all three sources fail to provide is any explanatory context: what type of matter "lies in the mouth," what consequences flowed from that designation, or how the concept interacted with the broader medieval English law of proof and pleading. The entries function as translation glosses, not analytical descriptions. A researcher who needs substantive content must go directly to Fleta.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly covers this maxim. Researchers may find relevant context under entries addressing medieval English pleading, oral conveyances, or the jurisprudence of Fleta and Bracton.
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