Definition
An archaic spelling variant of "lieutenant." The form appears in historical legal documents and records as an alternate rendering of the same office or rank. It carries no independent legal meaning distinct from "lieutenant" and is encountered primarily as a paleographic or orthographic curiosity in older manuscripts and printed sources.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not a current standard English spelling. "Lieutenant" is the accepted modern form, denoting a deputy or substitute acting in the place of a superior, or a military rank.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 records "lieutenant" as the standard form, derived from French, meaning one holding the place of another; a deputy or representative of a superior officer.
The legal significance of the "lieftenant" spelling is not definitional but orthographic. Researchers encountering this form in historical documents should understand it as the same word and office as "lieutenant" — the spelling divergence reflects period conventions of handwriting and typesetting, not a distinct legal concept.
Common Confusion
"Lieftenant" is sometimes treated by researchers as a distinct or obscure term requiring special interpretation. It is not. The form is a graphic variant only. The confusion arises most often when transcribing early modern English records where the letters u and f were rendered interchangeably in certain scribal hands and typefaces. Burrill's Law Dictionary notes this directly: the form "is important as showing the easy convertibility of the letter u into f." Researchers who encounter it should index and search under "lieutenant" for all substantive legal content.
Why It Matters in Research
The practical significance of this entry is paleographic, not doctrinal. Researchers working with early modern English legal records — particularly manuscripts from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries — will encounter spelling variants that can derail searches if not recognized. "Lieftenant" is one such variant. Its presence in Law Mind corpus sources signals several research considerations:
First, document search and indexing. Full-text searches for "lieutenant" will not surface documents rendered as "lieftenant" unless the corpus has been tagged or normalized for variant spellings. Researchers should run variant-spelling searches when working with pre-standardization materials.
Second, the u/f interchangeability noted by Burrill is not confined to this word. The same phenomenon appears in other legal terms — most notably in the fief/feud/fee cluster — and researchers who understand this scribal convention will read historical documents more accurately across a range of terms.
Third, the entry's presence in multiple editions of Black's and in Burrill confirms that legal lexicographers through the nineteenth century believed the variant spelling appeared with enough frequency in legal sources to warrant its own entry. This is a signal about the density of the form in the historical record.
For substantive research on the office or rank of lieutenant — including lord lieutenant, lieutenant governor, and analogous deputy offices — researchers should proceed directly to entries and encyclopedia articles under "lieutenant."
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries treat "lieftenant" identically in substance: it is an old form of "lieutenant," retained in what they call "vulgar pronunciation." Black's first and second editions reproduce nearly the same language verbatim. Burrill adds the most substantive gloss by connecting the spelling to the broader phenomenon of u/f interchangeability in medieval and early modern orthography, directing readers to the entries for "Fief" and "Fee" as comparative examples. This cross-reference is genuinely useful because it places the variant within a documented scribal pattern rather than treating it as an isolated anomaly.
None of the three dictionaries attempt a substantive definition of the office itself under this heading — all three treat the entry purely as a redirect and orthographic note. Researchers seeking the legal content of the lieutenant's office will find nothing further here and must consult the substantive "lieutenant" entries.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Lieutenant; Deputy and Deputation; Lord Lieutenant.