Definition
Per bouche (Law French: "by the mouth") means orally, by spoken word, as opposed to in writing. The phrase describes a mode of communication or testimony delivered verbally rather than through a written instrument. In historical legal practice, the term appeared in contexts where the manner of delivery — oral versus written — carried procedural or evidentiary significance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Bouche" is not a standard English word; it derives from French, meaning "mouth." The phrase per bouche has no independent entry in modern general English dictionaries and functions exclusively as a legal or archaic term.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as a standard English entry. The component word "mouth" appears in common usage as the organ of speech, and "by mouth" in ordinary English means spoken communication, as distinguished from written communication.
The phrase carries no gap between legal and common meaning in substance — "by mouth" means spoken in both contexts — but the Law French form per bouche flags a formal procedural distinction that plain English phrasing would not signal to a researcher navigating historical legal records. Encountering it in a source is a marker of historical legal drafting conventions, not ordinary speech.
Why It Matters in Research
Per bouche is a procedural marker, not a substantive legal doctrine. When you encounter it in historical sources, it signals that something — a vote, a statement, testimony, an instruction, a charge — was delivered orally rather than reduced to writing, and that the distinction mattered to the proceeding.
The primary research trap is mistaking this phrase for a term of art with a developed body of doctrine. It has none. It is a descriptive qualifier, and its significance in any given source depends entirely on context: Was an oath administered per bouche? Was a verdict returned per bouche rather than in writing? Was a parliamentary or jury instruction delivered orally? The answer shapes how that piece of evidence or procedural act should be understood and sourced.
Researchers working in early English legal records, state trial reports, and parliamentary history are most likely to encounter this phrase. The citation common to all three source dictionaries — 3 How. State Tr. 1024 — points to Howell's State Trials, a multivolume compilation of major English state prosecutions. That report series is a primary corpus for understanding oral versus written procedural formalities in high-profile criminal and political proceedings. Researchers should follow the citation directly rather than relying on dictionary paraphrase.
The term has essentially no presence in modern American legal writing. If it appears in a modern document, it is almost certainly a deliberate archaism, a quotation from a historical source, or an affectation. Do not assume it carries technical modern legal weight.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st), Black's (2nd), and Burrill's — give identical entries: the Law French gloss, the English translation "by the mouth; orally," and the same Howell's State Trials citation. There is no divergence, development, or elaboration across any of them. This uniformity signals that the term was included for completeness as historical legal vocabulary rather than because it had a contested or evolving meaning.
What the historical dictionaries omit: any procedural context explaining when or why oral delivery carried legal significance, any contrast with written alternatives, and any indication of how courts or tribunals treated orally delivered acts differently from written ones. Researchers cannot reconstruct the procedural stakes from the dictionary entry alone. The State Trials citation must be consulted directly.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses per bouche or historical oral-versus-written procedural distinctions. The matching entries returned — on negligence per se, physical takings per se rules, and defamation per se — share the Latin "per se" construction but are unrelated in meaning, doctrine, or research use. Those links are not relevant here and are omitted.