Definition
Nonage has two distinct meanings that have largely diverged over time.
1. (Primary modern meaning) The state of being below the legally recognized age of majority; minority. A person in nonage lacks full legal capacity to enter contracts, execute wills, marry without consent, or undertake other legally significant acts that require adult status. The condition ends upon reaching the age of majority as defined by the applicable jurisdiction.
2. (Historical ecclesiastical meaning, now obsolete) A payment of one-ninth of a deceased parishioner's movable goods made to the clergy of the parish upon death, ostensibly for pious uses. This meaning is confined to historical sources and has no practical legal significance today.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The state of being under legal age; minority; the fact of being a minor.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The ninth part of movable goods, formerly payable to the clergy on the death of persons in their parishes.
Editorial note: The common and legal meanings have undergone a near-complete reversal across time. Webster's 1913 records only the ecclesiastical payment meaning, which is now entirely obsolete. The modern common meaning — minority status — is the meaning that survives in legal usage. A researcher relying on Webster's 1913 alone would find no trace of the sense that dominates contemporary legal texts.
Common Confusion
Nonage and infancy are sometimes used interchangeably in older sources, but the terms carry different connotations. Infancy, in its legal sense, historically described the entire period of minority (not merely early childhood), and the two words often appeared as synonyms in common law pleading. In some historical sources, nonage was more specifically tied to incapacity doctrines in marriage and contract, while infancy carried broader tort and contract implications. Researchers should not assume that nonage always tracks identically with infancy when reading older cases or treatises, as the precise age thresholds and legal consequences could differ by context and jurisdiction.
Why It Matters in Research
The ecclesiastical meaning recorded in Black's 2nd Ed. Supplemental creates a research trap. A researcher encountering nonage in a pre-modern English legal text must determine from context whether the writer means minority status or the clergy payment. In most post-eighteenth-century legal writing, the ecclesiastical sense had already faded; but in ecclesiastical law materials, probate records, and English church court proceedings, the payment meaning remains operative.
For researchers working in family law, contract law, or capacity doctrine, nonage as minority is the relevant sense. Watch for its use in annulment proceedings — nonage has historically been a recognized ground for annulling a marriage contracted below the age of consent, and this usage appears with some frequency in equity and ecclesiastical court records where the modern word minority might not appear at all.
The term appears less frequently in contemporary American legal writing, where minority or minor has largely displaced it. Its continued appearance in older treatises, English common law materials, and some state codes means corpus researchers will encounter it with some regularity in historical layers of the Law Mind collection.
Age-of-majority thresholds have shifted over time — historically 21 at common law, now typically 18 in most American jurisdictions — so the practical meaning of nonage in a given document depends on when and where it was written.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's 2nd Ed. Supplemental records only the ecclesiastical payment meaning, citing Blount, and does not address nonage as minority at all. This is a significant omission that reflects the entry's supplemental and specialized character; it should not be read as evidence that the minority-status meaning was absent or unrecognized. Webster's 1913 similarly records only the payment sense. Neither source captures what became the dominant legal meaning.
The gap between the historical dictionaries and modern usage is instructive: the minority-status meaning of nonage is the older and more pervasive sense in general common law, yet the dictionary sources here happen to have preserved only the narrower ecclesiastical usage. Researchers should treat both entries as partial snapshots rather than comprehensive definitions.
Jurisdictional Note
The age of majority, which defines the outer boundary of nonage, varies by jurisdiction and by purpose — different thresholds may apply for contracts, marriage, voting, and alcohol consumption even within a single state. The common law baseline was 21; most American states and English law have moved to 18 for general purposes. Ecclesiastical law contexts are largely confined to English legal history.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Minority; Legal Capacity; Age of Majority; Annulment