Definition
In legal contexts, *mot* is a French word meaning "word." It appears in legal maxims, procedural formulas, and older English legal texts primarily in the phrase *de mot en mot*, meaning "word for word" or "verbatim." The phrase signals an exact, literal transcription or repetition of a text, oath, instrument, or statement — as opposed to a summary or paraphrase. It is not a term of substantive law but a term of legal precision, used to specify that what follows (or what was done) reproduced language exactly.
The term has no independent operative meaning in modern legal practice. It survives almost exclusively in historical sources and in scholarship on medieval and early modern English and French legal usage.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Mot* in contemporary informal English (particularly British and Irish) means a woman, wife, landlady, or, in some registers, a prostitute.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's records *mot* or *mote* as an archaic form of "may," "must," or "might," drawn from Chaucer. The phrase "so mote it be" — meaning "so be it" or "amen" — appears in Masonic ritual and Middle English devotional language.
Neither the colloquial nor the archaic common meaning has any relationship to the legal usage. A researcher encountering *mot* in a legal source — particularly a French law glossary, a Year Book entry, or a text citing Britton — should read it exclusively as the French word for "word," and understand it as a marker of verbatim precision, not as a modal verb or a reference to persons.
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Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of this entry is disambiguation. A researcher working through Burrill, Britton, or Year Book materials will encounter *mot* embedded in Latin-French legal phrases without definition or translation. Without recognizing it as the French "word," the phrase *de mot en mot* can appear opaque or be misread.
*De mot en mot* appears in contexts where exactness of language was legally consequential: oaths, pleadings, writs, and conditions in deeds. In early English practice, departures from required verbal formulas could void proceedings. The phrase thus signals a rule of strict verbal fidelity rather than substantial compliance.
Researchers should also note that Burrill's entry appears as a parenthetical cross-reference within the MORTGAGE entry, not as a standalone defined term. This reflects how historical dictionaries treated short French and Latin particles — embedded rather than headlined — meaning relevant usages may not surface in a simple alphabetical search. Scanning surrounding entries and cross-referenced terms is necessary when working in this stratum of the corpus.
No jurisdictional variation is relevant; this is a historical linguistic artifact, not a doctrine with live application.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary treats *mot* minimally: a brief inline gloss — "Fr. A word. *De mot en mot*; word for word" — with a citation to Britton, chapter 22. The entry is not independently headlined but appears in the course of defining MORTGAGEE, reflecting the incidental way period lexicographers handled common French particles. Burrill does not define the phrase's legal consequences, only its meaning.
Britton, the 13th-century French-language abridgment of English law attributed to the reign of Edward I, uses *mot* and *de mot en mot* in procedural and evidentiary contexts where verbatim recitation was required by practice. The Year Book reference in Burrill (M. 7 Hen. VI. 26) is noted in the MORTGAGEE entry for the spelling *morgagee*, not for *mot* itself — a reminder that Burrill's cross-referencing can require careful parsing to isolate which reference belongs to which sub-item.
No other source dictionary in the present corpus provides an independent entry for *mot*. Researchers requiring fuller treatment should consult Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) or Tomlins's *Law Dictionary*, both of which engage more systematically with Anglo-Norman legal vocabulary.
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