Definition
In civil and old English law, a fair or market. The term refers to a periodic marketplace gathering, recognized in both Roman law and early English legal tradition as a distinct legal venue for trade. The Latin plural nundinae (sometimes rendered nundine in anglicized usage) designated the fair as an institution — a place and occasion carrying specific legal attributes, including protections for buyers and sellers, jurisdictional implications, and privileges distinct from ordinary markets.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A market or fair held every eight days, particularly in historical Roman contexts; also, any recurring eight-day period or eight-day "week."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately entered; the term was treated as a Latinate word of antiquity referring to Roman market days held on the ninth day by Roman inclusive counting (every eighth day by modern reckoning).
The gap matters here. In common and classical usage, nundinae carries a temporal dimension — the periodicity of the eight-day Roman market cycle. In English legal sources, that temporal specificity drops away. Legal texts use the term generically to mean a fair or market as an institution, without fixing the eight-day interval as a legal element. A researcher encountering nundinae in Bracton or Fleta should not assume the Roman counting convention governs; the term functions as a near-synonym for the fair as a legal entity.
Common Confusion
Nundinae and market are often used interchangeably in early common law texts, but they were not always identical in legal significance. A market (mercatum) was typically a more routine, often weekly, local trading occasion. A fair (nundinae) was frequently a larger, more formally chartered event — often of longer duration, sometimes drawing traders from greater distances, and carrying distinct legal privileges such as exemption from certain tolls or special jurisdictional protections. The phrase in nundinis et mercatis (in fairs and markets), which appears repeatedly in Bracton and Fleta, treats the two as related but distinguishable categories. Researchers should not collapse them without confirming which institution a source intends.
Why It Matters in Research
NUNDINAE is a marker term — it signals that a legal source is operating within the Roman law or early English common law tradition of regulated trade venues. When you encounter it, you are likely in text dealing with: the law of fairs and markets, toll and toll-exemption disputes, franchise grants from the Crown, or the jurisdiction of courts of piepowder (the summary courts that sat during fairs to resolve disputes arising from them).
The term virtually disappears from English legal usage after the medieval period. Post-medieval sources discussing fairs will use "fair" directly, or reference statutory frameworks. If you are searching a corpus for material on fairs and markets, nundinae will retrieve medieval and early modern Latin texts; "fair" will retrieve the later anglophone materials. Running both searches is essential to avoid gaps.
Jurisdictional reach is narrow in the historical record: nundinae as a legal term is essentially confined to sources drawing on Roman law (Digest, Code) and the English common law texts most heavily influenced by that tradition — Bracton, Fleta, and their successors. It does not appear as a live legal term in American sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries converge tightly on the core meaning. All three define nundinae as a fair or fairs in civil and old English law. Burrill provides the most useful bibliographic anchoring, citing Digest 50.11, Code 4.60, and the Bracton and Fleta passages that contain the phrase in nundinis et mercatis. That phrase is the term's most frequent legal habitat and the form most likely encountered in corpus research.
Black's entry, as captured in the source material, is fragmentary — the nundinae definition appears embedded in surrounding maxim entries. This is a common artifact of dictionary digitization; the researcher should not treat the truncation as substantive. Rapalje & Lawrence offers the leanest entry ("a fair or fairs"), useful as confirmation that the term had no additional technical load in American legal reference usage by the late nineteenth century.
None of the three dictionaries explains the divergence between the Roman temporal meaning (the eight-day cycle) and the English legal usage (the fair as institution). That gap is worth flagging when interpreting historical sources: a Roman law passage about nundinae may be concerned with timing and periodicity; an English common law passage is almost certainly concerned with the fair as a venue with legal privileges.
Jurisdictional Note
Nundinae as a legal term is not operative in modern American or English law. It survives only in historical legal scholarship and in the interpretation of medieval texts. Researchers working in civil law jurisdictions with strong Roman law foundations may find the term persisting longer in legal literature than in the common law tradition.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Fairs and Markets (for the legal institution nundinae names and its place in English legal history); Roman Law Foundations in Common Law (for how Roman law terminology, including nundinae, entered and was transformed by the early common law tradition).