Definition
A Latin term meaning "aforesaid" or "the aforementioned." Used in legal documents, pleadings, and records to refer back to a person, thing, or matter already named or identified earlier in the same instrument. Functionally equivalent to a cross-reference within a document, signaling that the noun it modifies has already been introduced and need not be restated in full.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *prafatus* (or its abbreviations *prafat.* or *p. fat.*) in historical legal instruments — particularly medieval and early modern Latin records, ecclesiastical documents, chancery proceedings, and formal pleadings — should recognize it as a drafting convention rather than a term of legal art with substantive meaning. Its presence signals that the identification of a party or subject was made earlier in the same document; if the earlier reference is damaged, illegible, or on a missing folio, the abbreviated form provides no independent identification.
The abbreviations *prafat.* and *p. fat.* are a specific trap in archival research. Abbreviated Latin references of this kind were so common in manuscript records that they were sometimes misread or silently dropped in later transcriptions and calendars. A researcher relying on a printed calendar or abstract rather than the original instrument may find a person or property reference that seems to appear without introduction, when in fact the *prafatus* reference was pointing back to an earlier passage the calendar omitted.
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-modern legal sources. It is absent from contemporary legal drafting, which uses English equivalents such as "aforesaid," "aforementioned," "above-named," or simply defined shorthand terms in recital clauses. Researchers working in early modern English law will also encounter the English cognate "aforesaid" performing the same documentary function — the Latin and English forms coexisted in legal instruments during the transition away from Latin pleading in England, formalized by the Pleading in English Act 1650 and later requirements under the Administration of Justice Act 1731.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the only dictionary entry in the current corpus. The entry is brief and functional: it confirms the Latin meaning ("aforesaid"), identifies the standard abbreviations (*prafat.* and *p. fat.*), and does nothing further. No definition of legal effect is offered because none is needed — *prafatus* is a grammatical and drafting convention, not a legal doctrine.
Historical legal dictionaries generally treat Latin document conventions of this kind minimally, reserving substantive entries for terms carrying operative legal meaning. The sparse treatment in Black's is consistent with the term's role: it is infrastructure, not substance. Researchers should not expect richer treatment in other historical lexicons; Bouvier's Law Dictionary, for instance, similarly gives only brief glosses to Latin cross-reference terms of this class.
Note that *prafatus* reflects classical Latin orthography (*praefatus*, from *praefari*, to say beforehand), though legal manuscripts frequently employed variant spellings. Researchers searching manuscript indexes or calendars should account for spelling variation, including *prefatus*, *praefatus*, and contracted forms.
---