Definition
A Law French verb meaning "to lose." In medieval Anglo-Norman legal practice, *perdre* appears in pleading formulae and procedural texts to denote the forfeiture or loss of a right, claim, or property interest — typically as a consequence of procedural default, judgment against a party, or legal penalty. The term surfaces most often in the inflected forms *pert* (he loses; third person singular present) and *perdu* (lost; past participial form used adjectivally), both of which appear in early common law sources as technical shorthand for the legal consequence of loss or forfeiture.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): French verb meaning "to lose," used in ordinary modern French without legal connotation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed as an English entry; recognized as French origin. The adjectival form "perdu" appears in English to mean "lost," "hidden," or "in a forlorn position" — as in a soldier placed in a position of great danger or concealment.
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow but worth noting. Where ordinary usage treats *perdre* and *perdu* as descriptive terms (lost, hidden, abandoned), the Law French legal usage carries a specific operative consequence: the legal extinguishment of a right or the formal recording of a loss against a party in a proceeding. "Perdu" in a legal text is not merely descriptive — it marks a juridical result.
Common Confusion
*Perdre* / *perdu* should not be confused with "perdue" in the military sense (a soldier in a concealed or forlorn post), which shares etymology but has no legal function. Researchers encountering *perdu* in medieval legal manuscripts should resist reading it as the military or colloquial English sense; in the legal context it invariably refers to loss of a legal interest or right.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a paleographic and philological research issue rather than a substantive doctrinal one. Researchers working with early English Year Books, Norman-period plea rolls, or Anglo-French procedural texts will encounter *perdre*, *pert*, and *perdu* embedded in formulaic phrases recording the outcome of proceedings. Misreading *pert* (loses) as a proper noun or failing to recognize *perdu* as a past participial legal conclusion can cause a researcher to misunderstand whether a party succeeded or failed in a pleading.
The Law French legal vocabulary was not standardized in spelling, and variant forms (*perd*, *perdit*, *perdue*) appear across manuscript traditions. Burrill's entry cross-references *Fet Assaver* — a Norman treatise on legal procedure — which is the primary source context for these inflected forms. Researchers using that source or similar Norman procedural texts should treat *pert* and *perdu* as signal words indicating procedural loss or forfeiture.
Because *perdre* has no continued life as an operative English legal term (it was not carried forward into post-Norman common law vocabulary as a technical term of art), it will not appear in modern practice materials or statutory codes. Its relevance is entirely confined to the historical corpus — particularly Anglo-Norman and early medieval English legal sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term, and its entry is characteristically economical: it identifies the language (Law French), provides the translation (to lose), and supplies the two inflected forms (*pert* and *perdu*) with citations to *Fet Assaver*. The cross-references appended to Burrill's entry — Calvinus's *Lexicon*, Halifax's *Analysis*, and Heineccius's *Elementa Juris Civilis* — appear to have drifted into the entry from an adjacent entry in the source text and likely pertain to a different term (possibly *perduellio*, the Roman law concept of treason against the state). Researchers should not treat those civil law citations as authorities for *perdre* in the Anglo-French sense.
No other major historical English legal dictionaries (Blount, Cowell, Jacob, Tomlin, Black's early editions) carry *perdre* as a headword, which confirms its status as a term of limited currency — useful for glossing Norman sources but not an enduring term of art in the common law tradition.
Jurisdictional Note
Not applicable as a modern operative legal term. Relevant only to English legal history and the Norman-period common law corpus.