Definition
An archaic Law French verb meaning "to die." Used in early English legal texts and pleadings to express the death of a person, particularly in the context of succession, inheritance, and conditions dependent upon survival of issue.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with medieval English legal materials — particularly plea rolls, land conveyances, entail instruments, and early treatises written in Law French — will encounter this term in conditional clauses governing inheritance. The phrase *si l'engendrure moerge* ("if the issue die") appears in instruments establishing fee tail estates and similar contingent interests, where the survival or death of offspring determined whether land reverted, passed further, or escheated. Researchers should treat *moeryer* as a functional verb within a grammatical system, not a standalone legal concept: its meaning depends entirely on the surrounding condition. Because Law French orthography was inconsistent across scribes and centuries, variant spellings may appear. Cross-reference against glossaries of Law French when the surrounding text is ambiguous.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary support for this term, identifying it as Law French for "to die" and citing Kelham's glossary and Britton (c. 102) as authorities. The entry is minimal but accurate. Britton, the late thirteenth-century English legal treatise attributed to the reign of Edward I, is a primary source context in which this verb would naturally appear, as the work addressed real property, inheritance, and succession extensively in Law French. Burrill offers no substantive elaboration beyond the translation and illustrative phrase, reflecting the term's purely functional grammatical role rather than any independent doctrinal significance.
Historical dictionaries generally give Law French verbs short treatment because their legal weight derives from the clauses they appear in, not from the words themselves. Researchers should not expect to find *moeryer* defined with doctrinal content; its value is philological and translational.