Definition
An archaic Law French adverbial phrase meaning "namely" or "to wit." Used in medieval legal pleading and drafting to introduce a specific enumeration or particularization — that is, to signal that what follows is a precise identification or itemization of something previously stated in general terms. Functionally equivalent to the Latin *videlicet* (abbreviated *viz.*) and to the English "that is to say."
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *nomement* will find it almost exclusively in medieval English legal records, Year Books, and early treatises drawing on the Anglo-Norman law French that dominated English legal practice from the Norman Conquest through the late medieval period. Its appearance in a document serves as a signal that a specific enumeration follows — which matters for interpreting the scope of a grant, plea, or charge. A researcher who does not recognize the term risks misreading the structure of the passage entirely, treating the introduced list as a separate clause rather than as a particularization of what came before.
The term has no meaningful survival into modern legal usage. It does not appear in equity or common law pleading after the consolidation of English into legal drafting, having been displaced by *videlicet*, *viz.*, "namely," and "to wit" — all of which perform the same enumerating function and which a researcher should cross-reference when tracing the evolution of particularizing language in pleadings and instruments.
Because *nomement* is a function word rather than a substantive legal concept, its importance is navigational and interpretive rather than doctrinal. It tells you how to read what follows, not what the underlying legal rule is.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the entry in terse form: "L. Fr. Namely; to wit. Britt. c. 27. Kelham." The reference to *Britton* (c. 27) places the term's documented usage in the late thirteenth century, consistent with the period of peak Law French usage in English legal writing. Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779) is the standard secondary authority for Law French vocabulary of this type, and Burrill's citation to it is a standard cross-reference across historical legal dictionaries for terms of this character.
No substantive divergence among historical dictionary sources is present here because the term is not conceptually contested — it is a function word with a fixed meaning. What the historical sources collectively do not address is the interpretive consequence of the term in context: how courts or scribes used particularization introduced by *nomement* to expand or limit the apparent scope of surrounding language. Researchers requiring that level of analysis must go to the primary records themselves.