Definition
Por is a Law French preposition meaning "for." It is an archaic orthographic variant of the more commonly encountered Law French pour. In legal manuscripts and records composed in Law French, por functions as a connective or introductory particle appearing in set phrases:
1. Por ce — "for this; therefore." Used in legal pleadings and records to introduce a conclusion or consequence.
2. Por quei — "wherefore." A formulaic term appearing in writs, pleadings, and judgments to introduce a demand, prayer for relief, or operative conclusion.
The term has no independent substantive legal meaning. It is a function word whose significance lies in recognizing it as a variant spelling when reading historical documents.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Por" in contemporary English usage is an abbreviation for Portugal or Portuguese.
Historical common usage: Not attested as an English word in Webster's 1913.
The gap here is total. A researcher encountering "por" in a modern context will find no connection to its historical legal function. The abbreviation for Portugal shares nothing with the Law French preposition. Confusion is most likely to arise when transcribing or searching historical legal records, where "por" must be read as a spelling variant of "pour," not as a proper-noun abbreviation or any English word.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English legal records — Year Books, plea rolls, writs, and early chancery documents — will encounter Law French extensively. Por is one of several unstable orthographic variants that appear in these sources before Law French spelling conventions stabilized. The same word may appear as por, pur, or pour depending on the period, scribe, and manuscript tradition.
Two specific research traps arise:
First, keyword and full-text searches will miss occurrences if a researcher searches only for pour and not for por or pur. Any corpus search of Law French materials should account for all three spellings.
Second, the phrases por ce and por quei are formulaic elements embedded in the structure of pleadings and writs. Recognizing them is essential for parsing document structure — por quei, in particular, signals the transition to the prayer for relief or the wherefore clause, a structurally important moment in any pleading. Failing to recognize the phrase can cause a researcher to misread the logical architecture of a document.
The term also connects to the broader challenge of Law French as a research language: it was never fully standardized, it diverged from continental French at an early date, and its spelling varied across centuries and jurisdictions within England. Historical dictionaries of Law French (Kelham's being the primary reference Burrill cites here) remain essential tools for this work.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only substantive historical dictionary treatment found in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill's entry is brief but accurate: it identifies por as a Law French variant of pour, gives its meaning as "for," and supplies the two primary compound phrases — por ce (therefore) and por quei (wherefore) — with attribution to Kelham's Law French dictionary.
Burrill does not attempt a comprehensive account of por's usage across the Year Books or plea rolls, nor does he trace its chronological range. This is a functional gap: researchers who need to date when por gave way to pour as the standard spelling, or who need to assess regional variation in its use, will need to go beyond Burrill to Kelham directly and to paleographic guides to medieval legal manuscripts.
No Latin or continental French legal dictionary entry for por is relevant to its English legal use. The Latin por noted in classical sources (a variant of puer, meaning "slave boy," appearing in Roman slave names such as Marcipor) is entirely unrelated to the Law French term and should not be confused with it.
Jurisdictional Note
Por as a Law French term is specific to the English legal tradition and its derivative systems. It does not appear in Scottish, continental European, or civil law sources as a legal term of art. Researchers working in Welsh, Irish, or early American colonial records that drew on English common law forms may encounter it in copied pleading formulae, but it is not native to those traditions.