MOUN

Definition

An archaic Law French term meaning "my." Used in early English legal records and Year Books as a possessive pronoun, appearing most commonly in compound phrases. The primary attested example is "moun piere," meaning "my father," found in Year Book records from the reign of Edward II. The term belongs to the Law French vocabulary that dominated English legal writing and pleading from the Norman Conquest through the early modern period.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No current entry. The term is obsolete in all registers of English. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Listed only as an obsolete plural of "mow" (meaning "may"), attributed to Wyclif. No connection to the legal meaning. The Webster's entry and the legal term are unrelated words that happen to share the same spelling. The legal "moun" is Law French; the Webster's "moun" is archaic Middle English. A researcher encountering the word in a historical legal manuscript should not draw on the Webster's sense at all.

Why It Matters in Research

A researcher is unlikely to encounter "moun" as a standalone entry in a legal source. It appears embedded in compound phrases within Year Book citations and early plea roll transcripts, where Law French was the operative language of the court. Understanding that "moun" simply means "my" allows correct parsing of such phrases without misreading them as terms of art. The principal trap is treating "moun piere" or similar phrases as fixed legal terms rather than ordinary possessive constructions. They carry no technical legal significance beyond their literal meaning. A second trap is conflating this word with the Webster's Middle English "moun," which has no legal application whatsoever. Researchers working in Law French sources more broadly should note that possessive pronouns varied in Law French legal writing by context and period. "Mon," "ma," and "moun" appear as variants depending on the manuscript tradition and the scribe's orthographic habits. Normalizing these variants is necessary before concluding that a phrase is or is not present in a source. For corpus researchers using Law Mind, "moun" will surface primarily in Year Book material and in glossary apparatus attached to medieval legal texts. It is unlikely to appear in post-1650 sources except as a quoted archaism or in scholarly annotation.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment is brief: "moun" is defined as the Law French word for "my," with "moun piere" (my father) as the sole illustrative phrase, citing Year Book Michaelmas Term, 3 Edward II, page 49. Burrill embeds the entry within a cluster of Law French terms, noting the related term "mounster" (a church or minster) immediately following — a distinct word with no connection to the possessive pronoun. No other major historical legal dictionaries — not Bouvier, not Black's early editions, not Tomlin — carry an independent entry for "moun." This is consistent with the term's status as a function word rather than a legal term of art. Its appearance in Burrill reflects his more exhaustive approach to Law French vocabulary compared to later American dictionaries, which largely abandoned Law French apparatus.

Jurisdictional Note

"Moun" is a feature of medieval English legal French and has no application in any modern jurisdiction. It is relevant only to historical legal research in English common law sources predating the decline of Law French pleading, conventionally placed at the Proceedings in Courts of Justice Act 1731, which required English in legal proceedings.

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