Definition
An old English legal term with several historical meanings, most commonly denoting a measure of corn or grain used in medieval English law. Beyond this primary legal sense, historical authorities also record mina as: (1) a measure of ground said to contain one hundred and twenty feet in length and varying breadth; (2) an ancient coin; and (3) a unit of weight. The term appears almost exclusively in legal antiquities and historical documents; it has no active modern legal usage.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A valley near Mecca.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): An ancient weight or denomination of money, of varying value. The Attic mina was valued at a hundred drachmas.
The legal and common historical usages pull in different directions. Classical and biblical sources use mina primarily as a monetary unit or weight (the Greek and Hebrew mina), while old English legal usage centers on grain measurement. Researchers encountering mina in medieval English records should resist importing the classical monetary meaning unless context clearly supports it.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Related terms recorded by Rapalje & Lawrence provide useful distinctions:
MINAGE: A toll or duty paid for selling corn by the mina. A separate legal term, though derived from the same root.
MINARE: To dig mines. An unrelated Latin verb appearing in the same lexical neighborhood; researchers should not conflate it with mina as a unit of measure.
Why It Matters in Research
Mina is a term of pure historical interest. Researchers will encounter it only in medieval English legal records, manorial documents, agricultural surveys, or legal antiquities texts. Several practical hazards exist:
First, the term is ambiguous even within historical legal sources. Bouvier records three distinct meanings — grain measure, land measure, and monetary/weight unit — without clearly specifying which applied in which context. A researcher cannot assume the same meaning across different document types.
Second, the grain-measure meaning is the one most consistently supported across the law dictionary tradition (Black's, Burrill's, Rapalje & Lawrence all converge on it), suggesting it was the dominant legal usage in English practice. Bouvier's broader treatment likely reflects his inclusion of civil law and classical sources alongside common law materials.
Third, minage — the toll paid for selling corn by the mina — is a distinct legal concept that may appear in the same documents as mina itself. Confirm which term is actually present before drawing conclusions about rights, duties, or quantities.
Fourth, because mina overlaps with the classical monetary unit familiar to scholars of Roman and Greek law, there is a risk of cross-contamination when researching in comparative or ecclesiastical law contexts where Latin sources mix common law and civil law terminology.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five historical dictionaries consulted show broad agreement on the grain-measure meaning, all tracing the definition to the same two antiquarian authorities: Cowell's Interpreter and Spelman's Glossary. This convergence signals that the law dictionaries are drawing from a single line of authority rather than independent verification — researchers should be aware that the definition rests on those two foundational sources and not a broader evidentiary base.
Bouvier diverges meaningfully by adding the land-measure and coin/weight meanings, citing Jacob's Law Dictionary and "Lit. Dict." (likely Thomas Littleton's work or a related legal dictionary). This makes Bouvier the most expansive treatment but also the least tightly grounded in purely English common law practice. Where Bouvier's additional meanings come from civil law or classical traditions, they may not accurately reflect how mina functioned in English legal documents.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds the most practical value by including minage and minare as companion entries, alerting the researcher to related terms that could appear in proximity.
No historical dictionary provides guidance on regional variation within England, on the actual quantity represented by the mina as a grain measure, or on the periods during which the term was actively in use.
Jurisdictional Note
Mina as a legal term of art is specific to old English law and appears in the common law tradition only as a historical artifact. It has no recognized usage in modern American, Canadian, or Commonwealth legal systems.