Definition
In law Latin, *jejunium* means fasting. The term appears in early common law and ecclesiastical law contexts, where fasting days carried legal significance — particularly in relation to the computation of time, the validity of oaths, and religious obligations enforceable through ecclesiastical courts. As a standalone legal term, it rarely appears outside historical texts and is encountered primarily in Latin maxims, ecclesiastical records, and medieval pleading.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Jejunium* is the Latin word for fasting or abstinence from food, forming the root of the English word "jejune" and the anatomical term "jejunum" (the middle section of the small intestine).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not carry an entry for *jejunium* itself, though "jejune" appears as an adjective meaning lacking nourishment, dry, or meager.
The gap between common and legal usage is modest but specific: where the ordinary and anatomical senses of the root word are about physiology or abstinence generally, the legal sense was institutional — fasting days under canon law and ecclesiastical practice had procedural and jurisdictional consequences in courts that recognized religious observance as a structuring principle of the calendar.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers are most likely to encounter *jejunium* in one of three contexts: (1) ecclesiastical court records and canon law commentaries where fasting days affected court calendars and the scheduling of proceedings; (2) Latin glossaries appended to early common law treatises, where terms like this appear in lists of ecclesiastical or civil law vocabulary; (3) historical pleading documents in which Latin terminology was standard before the English-language requirements of later procedural reforms.
The primary research trap is assuming the term has a robust common law procedural meaning. It does not. *Jejunium* belongs largely to the ecclesiastical law tradition imported into English practice through church courts, not to the common law proper. A researcher who finds the term in a document is most likely working with an ecclesiastical record, a canon law text, or a Latin form book rather than a common law pleading.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry cross-references Jacob's Law Dictionary, indicating that the word had sufficient circulation in English legal Latin to warrant inclusion in earlier English law dictionaries. Researchers consulting Jacob (Giles Jacob, *A New Law Dictionary*, various editions from 1729 onward) may find marginally more context there, though Jacob's entry is similarly sparse.
Because ecclesiastical courts in England handled matters of marriage, wills, tithes, and moral discipline well into the nineteenth century, documents from those proceedings — particularly pre-1858 probate and matrimonial records — may contain law Latin vocabulary including *jejunium*. American researchers will encounter this term almost exclusively in inherited English legal forms or in comparative canon law scholarship.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define *jejunium* tersely as "fasting," citing Jacob. This is the full extent of substantive treatment in the accessible historical dictionaries represented in the Law Mind corpus. The brevity is not a gap in scholarship — the word simply did not develop the doctrinal weight that would require extended legal definition. It was a functional Latin term for a recognized religious practice, not a term of art with contested meaning or formal legal elements.
What historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural significance of fasting days in ecclesiastical court scheduling. Canonical fasting days (*dies jejunii*) could affect when courts sat, when oaths were administered, and how time was computed in ecclesiastical proceedings. That dimension of the term's legal relevance must be recovered from canon law sources and ecclesiastical court practice manuals rather than from law dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
The term has no meaningful application in American law as a term of art. In English legal history, its relevance was limited to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Researchers working in Scottish, Irish, or continental canon law records may find parallel usage.