Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "slain" or "killed." Derived from the Latin *occisus* (past participle of *occidere*, to kill), the term appears in early Anglo-Norman legal texts to denote a person who has been slain. It functioned as a descriptive word in pleadings and writs concerned with homicide, indicating the victim or the fact of killing rather than naming a specific legal category or cause of action.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *occys* will find it almost exclusively in medieval and early Anglo-Norman legal sources — particularly in texts following the style of Britton, the late-thirteenth-century English legal treatise written in Law French. The term has no living legal usage and will not appear in modern statutes, case law, or secondary literature except as a historical quotation or gloss.
The principal trap is misreading the term as a proper name or a term of art with technical legal significance beyond its plain descriptive meaning. It is not a doctrine, a writ, or a cause of action — it is simply the Law French equivalent of "slain." When encountered in a primary source, it signals that the surrounding text concerns a homicide matter and that the document dates to the Anglo-Norman period of English legal writing.
Researchers working in early English criminal law or the history of homicide doctrine should treat *occys* as a linguistic marker of period and provenance rather than a term requiring interpretive unpacking.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical dictionary entry of note, identifying *occys* as Law French derived from the Latin *occisus* and citing Britton, chapter 5. The entry is brief and purely definitional, offering no doctrinal commentary — appropriate given that the word carries no legal meaning beyond its translation. No significant divergence or debate exists among historical sources on this term; its meaning is stable and uncontested. What historical dictionaries collectively do not address is the broader linguistic context: Law French as a legal medium was in decline by the fifteenth century, and terms like *occys* became obsolete as English displaced French in pleading and judicial records.