LESSA - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

LESSAAuthored

The Law Mind • 393 words

Definition

An archaic Latin term meaning a legacy — that is, a gift of personal property made by will. The term appears in early legal texts and is encountered primarily in historical English and ecclesiastical records relating to testamentary dispositions.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working with medieval English legal records, monastic documents, or early ecclesiastical court materials may encounter *lessa* as a variant or abbreviated reference to a testamentary legacy. The term has no practical life in modern legal usage and is essentially a paleographic and lexicographic curiosity rather than a living legal concept.

The primary citation in both historical dictionaries — Mon. Ang. tom. i. 562 (Monasticon Anglicanum) — situates *lessa* firmly in the context of ecclesiastical and monastic records. Researchers consulting Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum should be alert to the term appearing in Latin instruments recording bequests to religious houses. Outside that specific documentary tradition, the term is unlikely to surface.

Note that the Rapalje & Lawrence entry contains material appended to the definition of *lessa* that appears to belong to an entirely separate topic — the postal rule of contract formation (the rule that acceptance of an offer by post is complete upon dispatch). This is almost certainly a typographical or compilation error in the source dictionary, where text from an adjacent entry was incorrectly run into the *lessa* entry. Researchers should not associate the postal rule doctrine with this term. The operative definition, consistent across both Bouvier and Rapalje & Lawrence, is simply: a legacy.

Historical Dictionary Support

Both Bouvier's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence agree completely on the definition: *lessa* means a legacy, with the single supporting citation to Monasticon Anglicanum. Neither source elaborates further, which reflects the term's narrow scope and limited relevance even at the time those dictionaries were compiled. The brevity of both entries signals that this was already an antiquarian term by the nineteenth century rather than one in active legal use.

The corruption in the Rapalje & Lawrence entry — the intrusion of contract formation doctrine — is a reminder that historical legal dictionaries, particularly in their digitized or transcribed forms, can carry forward typesetting and transcription errors that may mislead researchers who rely on them uncritically.

LESSAmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883

A legacy. Mon. Ang. tom. i. 562. a proposal to another by letter is considered in law as making it during the whole time that the letter is traveling, and that as soon as the acceptor despatches his acceptance, he may treat the contract as complete. In other words, an acceptance by letter is complete as against the proposer from the date of posting the acceptance, if it arrives within the proper time. What is a proper time" depends on ،، LESSEE-LESSOR.-In the most general sense of the words, "where a man letteth to another lands or tenements for terme of life, or for terme of years, or to hold at will, he which maketh the lease is called lessor, and he to whom the lease is whether the proposer has prescribed a made is called lessee." (Litt. § 57.) In mode and time of communicating the practice, however, the terms lessor and acceptance. If he has not, it depends on lessee are only used in the case of a lease for years, for occupation, building, or mining purposes, or the like. See LEASE; TENANT FOR LIFE; TENANT FOR YEARS;