Definition
A term from Roman and civil law denoting a child born outside of lawful marriage — a bastard or illegitimate child. In its strictest classical sense, nothus referred specifically to the offspring of an adulterous union, though the term was used more broadly in both civil law and early English legal writing to encompass any child of spurious or illegitimate birth. The word carried legal weight in determining inheritance rights, civic status, and family membership under Roman law, where the distinction between a child born in lawful wedlock and one born outside it had significant legal consequences.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not independently listed in Wiktionary as an English word; survives primarily as a Latinate or taxonomic term in biological nomenclature, where it denotes a hybrid organism.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined in Webster's 1913 as an English legal or common term; treated as a Latin word appearing in legal and scholarly contexts.
The biological usage — designating a hybrid or mixed-origin organism — preserves a faint echo of the word's classical sense of mixed or irregular descent. A researcher encountering nothus in a biological text should not assume legal illegitimacy is meant; the taxonomic and legal senses are entirely distinct.
Common Confusion
Nothus is sometimes used interchangeably in historical sources with spurius, but the terms were not always synonymous. In strict Roman law usage, spurius described a child whose father was unknown or uncertain, while nothus described a child whose parentage was known but illegitimate — typically adulterous. Burrill notes that nothus properly denoted offspring of an adulterous connection specifically. In practice, both terms and their English equivalents (bastard, natural child, illegitimate child) were often conflated in common law writing, and the Roman distinction rarely survived intact into English legal usage.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in civil law history, ecclesiastical law, or early English common law will encounter nothus in Latin source material and in English treatises that drew on Roman and canon law frameworks. Several points deserve attention:
First, the term appears almost exclusively in historical sources. It has no operative role in modern statutory or case law, which uses illegitimate child, nonmarital child, or similar terms. Finding nothus in a source signals engagement with the civil law tradition rather than the common law.
Second, the distinction between nothus (adulterous offspring, parentage known) and spurius (parentage unknown or uncertain) was meaningful in Roman law but was largely collapsed in medieval English usage. A reader of Coke or Bracton should not assume the Roman precision survived translation.
Third, Burrill's reference to Coke on Littleton (244a) and to Novella 89 of Justinian connects this term to substantive legal discussions of inheritance and status — researchers tracing illegitimacy doctrine into the common law should follow those citations rather than treating nothus as a standalone definition.
Fourth, in ecclesiastical court records and canon law materials, nothus may appear in proceedings touching legitimacy, which affected both succession and ecclesiastical office eligibility. The term in those contexts carries the full weight of the civil law tradition it imports.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: a natural or illegitimate child, derived from Roman law. Black's (both editions) offers the briefest treatment, describing nothus as "a natural child or a person of spurious birth" without distinguishing between the Roman subtypes. Burrill provides the most substantive entry, correctly identifying the Greek origin (νόθος), noting the adulterous-connection sense as the proper classical meaning, and citing both Justinian's Novella 89 and Coke on Littleton 244a — giving researchers actual anchor points in the primary literature.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the downstream question: how this Roman category mapped (or failed to map) onto English common law concepts of bastardy. That gap is significant. English common law developed its own legitimacy rules through a combination of common law doctrine and ecclesiastical court jurisdiction, and Roman categories like nothus were absorbed selectively and imprecisely. Researchers should treat the dictionary definitions as an entry point, not a complete account.
Jurisdictional Note
Nothus is a civil law term with no jurisdiction-specific application in modern common law systems. Its relevance is historical and comparative. Researchers working in Louisiana, Quebec, or other mixed jurisdictions with civil law traditions may encounter it in older legal texts with somewhat greater frequency than in purely common law jurisdictions.