MAINAD

3 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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MAINADAuthored
The Law Mind • 522 words
Definition
An archaic term from old English law meaning a false oath or perjury. The term referred to the act of swearing falsely — knowingly taking an oath while stating what is untrue — and was used in early legal contexts where formal oath-taking carried both legal and religious weight. The term is entirely obsolete in modern practice and appears only in historical sources.
Why It Matters in Research
MAINAD is a term a researcher will encounter only in early English legal records, medieval proceedings, or treatises citing to those sources. It has no modern usage and no counterpart in current statutory or common law frameworks. Researchers working in pre-modern English ecclesiastical courts, oath-based proceedings, or early common law materials may find the term applied where modern doctrine would simply use perjury or false swearing. The more practical research trap is the Bouvier's entry, which runs MAINAD and MAINE together without clear separation, creating a formatting artifact in some digitized editions of that dictionary. Researchers accessing Bouvier's in OCR-processed or poorly paginated digital form should verify they are reading the MAINAD entry and not a bleed-over from the adjacent MAINE entry. The two terms share no legal relationship whatsoever. Because the term traces to the Saxon "manath" or "mainath," it belongs to a cluster of early oath-related vocabulary in English legal history. Researchers working on the history of perjury doctrine or the legal treatment of oaths in pre-Norman and early Norman England may find MAINAD useful as a philological marker, but it carries no independent doctrinal weight.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in agreement on the core meaning: a false oath, synonymous with perjury. Black's attributes the definition to Cowell — referring to John Cowell's legal glossary, The Interpreter (1607) — and traces the etymology to Saxon roots. This makes MAINAD one of a number of terms in Black's and Bouvier's that descend from Cowell and reflect sixteenth and seventeenth century legal antiquarianism rather than living doctrine even at the time those dictionaries were compiled. Neither source treats MAINAD as a term with active legal application in their own era. Both present it in the register of historical curiosity. Bouvier's entry is truncated and runs into the MAINE entry, suggesting that even within that dictionary the term warranted minimal treatment. Neither source offers any case authority, statute, or proceeding in which MAINAD appears as operative language, which confirms its purely archaic status. Researchers should not assume that because a term appears in Black's or Bouvier's it was current law at the time of those editions. MAINAD is an example of both dictionaries functioning as legal-historical glossaries rather than guides to contemporary practice.
Related Terms
Perjury — the modern legal doctrine that replaced and subsumed the concept expressed by MAINAD False swearing — a related but technically distinct modern offense in some jurisdictions Oath — the foundational concept underlying MAINAD's meaning Subornation of perjury — inducing another to commit false swearing; historically adjacent in oath-based proceedings Cowell's Interpreter — the primary source through which MAINAD enters the Anglo-American legal dictionary tradition
MAINADmain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
In old English law. A false oath; perjury. Cowell. Probably from Sax. “manath” or “mainath” a false or deceitful oath.
MAINADmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
A false oath; perjury. Cow. ΜΑΙΝΕ. The name of one of the states of the United States of America, formed out of that part of the territory of Mas- sachusetts called the district of Maine. The territory embraced in the new state was not contiguous to that remaining in the state from which it was taken, and was more than four times as large. The legislature of Massachusetts, by an act passed June 19, 1819, gave its consent for the people of the district to become a separate and Independent state. They met in convention, by delegates elected for the purpose, and formed a separate state, by the style of the State of Maine, and adopted a constitution for the government thereof, October 19, 1819, and applied to congress, at its next session, for admission into the Union. The petition was presented in the house of repre sentatives of the United States, December 8, 1819, and the state was admitted into the Union by the act of congress of March 8, 18:20, from and after the fifteenth day of March, 1820.

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