Definition
In historical legal usage, MEU (also spelled MEUX, MEUZ, MEUTZ, MEULTZ) is a Law French term meaning "moved" or "commenced," used specifically in the context of initiating a suit or legal proceeding. A suit was said to be "meu" when it had been brought or set in motion before a court.
The variant forms MEULX, MEUX, MEUZ, MEUTZ, and MEULTZ carry the distinct meaning of "better," functioning as a comparative adjective in Law French legal pleading and text.
These are two related but distinct usages sharing a common orthographic cluster in medieval Anglo-Norman legal writing.
Common Confusion
The cluster of spellings — MEU, MEUX, MEUZ, MEUTZ, MEULTZ — presents a genuine trap for researchers. The same root word generates two different meanings depending on context: "moved/commenced" (MEU) versus "better" (MEULX and variants). A researcher encountering an unfamiliar spelling in a medieval or early modern legal manuscript should not assume which meaning applies without reading the surrounding text. The variant spellings are not reliable signals of which sense is intended; scribal inconsistency was common in Law French manuscripts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English legal records, Year Books, or texts citing Britton will encounter this term and its variants. Several practical points:
First, the "commenced" sense of MEU appears in procedural contexts — questions of whether a suit had been properly initiated, or whether jurisdiction had been invoked. Britton, cited by Burrill, is one of the early treatises on English law (circa late 13th century), and the term appears in that procedural register.
Second, the "better" sense (MEULX and variants) functions as an ordinary comparative in Law French and appears in a wide range of substantive legal contexts — land law, pleading, and rights disputes — wherever a comparative quality was being asserted or adjudicated.
Third, the orthographic instability of Law French generally means that corpus searches for any single spelling will miss related occurrences. A thorough search requires querying MEU, MEUX, MEUZ, MEUTZ, MEULTZ, and possibly additional variants. Law Mind corpus researchers should treat any one spelling as a pointer to a family of forms rather than a definitive search term.
Fourth, modern uses of "MEU" as an acronym for Marine Expeditionary Unit are entirely unrelated to the historical legal term and will generate noise in corpus searches that do not filter by date range or document type. Researchers should apply appropriate date filters when working in historical collections.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the principal source for this term in the Law Mind shelf. Burrill traces MEU to Kelham's Law French dictionary and to Britton, providing the "moved/commenced" meaning, then immediately distinguishes the variant forms MEULX and its cognates as meaning "better," again citing Kelham. This entry is notable for its brevity — Burrill treats the term as a functional gloss rather than a substantive legal concept requiring extended analysis. No competing historical dictionary entries are available in the current corpus for comparison.
The Kelham citations are to Robert Kelham's A Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language (1779), a standard reference for Law French vocabulary. Britton (c. 1290) is one of the earliest systematic treatises on English common law and is a primary source for Law French procedural terminology of the period.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: neither Burrill nor the sources he cites discuss how courts or pleaders distinguished the two meanings in practice, nor do they address the full range of orthographic variation that appears in manuscript sources.
Jurisdictional Note
This is a term of historical English legal usage. It does not appear in modern statutory or case law in any jurisdiction in its Law French sense. Researchers will encounter it exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal sources.