Definition
In old Scots law, an ox used for tillage. The term appears in historical Scottish criminal records in the context of agricultural property, livestock ownership, and offenses involving working animals.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An animal, especially a beast of burden.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A beast; especially, a beast of burden. Marked as obsolete.
The gap here runs in the opposite direction from most legal terms: the common meaning is broader (any beast of burden), while the legal meaning as recorded in Scots law sources is narrower and more specific (an ox employed for tillage). A researcher relying on the general English sense risks reading the term too expansively in historical Scottish legal documents.
Why It Matters in Research
JUMENT is a term of very limited, highly localized significance. Its relevance is essentially confined to old Scots criminal law records, particularly those dealing with agricultural property offenses — theft of livestock, wrongful taking of farm animals, or disputes over working beasts. Researchers working in pre-modern Scottish legal materials should recognize the term when it surfaces without assuming it carries weight in any other jurisdiction or era.
The sole documentary anchor across all three source dictionaries is a single citation: Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland (part 2, p. 89). This suggests the term's survival in legal literature depends almost entirely on that one source, and researchers should treat JUMENT as a term of art specific to that corpus rather than a concept with broader doctrinal development.
There is no modern usage of this term in legal practice. It will not appear in contemporary statutes, case law, or regulatory materials. Its only research value is archival and historical.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's are in complete agreement: all three define JUMENT as an ox used for tillage in old Scots law, and all three point to the same source in Pitcairn's Criminal Trials. The uniformity is notable — no divergence, no expansion of meaning, no additional context. This consistency across dictionaries likely reflects shared reliance on Pitcairn rather than independent research into a richer body of sources.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is any broader category of law in which JUMENT played a role — whether it appeared in property law, in statutes regulating agricultural labor, or solely in criminal contexts. The limitation of the entry to a single citation in a criminal trials record leaves that question open.
Webster's 1913 marks the common English word as obsolete, which aligns with its complete absence from modern legal usage.
Jurisdictional Note
JUMENT is a term of old Scots law exclusively. It has no established meaning or usage in English common law, American law, or civil law systems. Researchers outside Scottish historical legal materials will not encounter it.