Definition
A term of contempt historically applied to the English, derived as a corruption of "Saxons." The name was used by Welsh speakers who rejected the English preference for the self-designation "Angles" (from which "England" and "English" derive). In Welsh usage, the term persisted as an ethnonym for the English generally, without necessary pejorative force in later periods, though its origin was distinctly dismissive.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "Sasson" — no independent common English definition offered beyond the base form.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not entered.
The gap here is directional: the term survives in Welsh-language contexts as a relatively neutral ethnonym ("Saeson" in modern Welsh spelling) for English people, while its legal-dictionary appearance reflects an earlier English awareness of the word specifically as a contemptuous label. A researcher encountering "Sassons" in an English legal or historical text is seeing the English rendering of a Welsh word, not a Welsh speaker's usage, and the contempt framing belongs to the English-language gloss rather than necessarily to the Welsh tradition.
Common Confusion
"Sassons" should not be confused with "Saxons" proper. The legal dictionaries define it explicitly as a corruption of "Saxons," but the two are not interchangeable in historical sources. "Saxons" appears in its own right throughout legal and constitutional history (Anglo-Saxon law, the Saxon polity, etc.), while "Sassons" appears almost exclusively as an ethnolinguistic curiosity — a record of how Welsh speakers named the English — not as a term with independent doctrinal content.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a marginal legal-dictionary entry with no doctrinal content. It appears in Black's across editions as a lexicographical artifact rather than an operative legal term — included, most likely, because early editions of Black's cast a wide net over terms appearing in English legal and historical texts, including ethnonyms and terms of art from neighboring linguistic traditions.
Researchers are most likely to encounter "Sassons" not in case law or statutes but in older historical legal commentary, glossaries, or texts touching on the relationship between Welsh and English law. The Welsh legal tradition — including the laws of Hywel Dda and the subsequent subordination of Welsh law to English common law — forms the context in which such ethnonyms carried practical significance. A document using "Sassons" is almost certainly signaling a Welsh-perspective or Welsh-adjacent source, which itself is relevant navigational information.
The term does not appear to have been used in pleading, conveyancing, or any procedural context. Its presence in a legal text is a cultural and linguistic marker, not a term of art requiring legal interpretation.
Researchers working in Welsh legal history, the history of the English-Welsh legal union (notably the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542), or early British ethnography will find the term intelligible without further definition. Researchers in any other context can treat it as background vocabulary.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) are in complete agreement: both entries reproduce the same definition word-for-word, identifying "Sassons" as a corruption of "Saxons" and a name of contempt formerly given to the English. Both editions note that Welsh speakers continued to use the term.
Neither edition attempts to give the term legal operative meaning, which is itself informative: Black's includes it as part of a broader effort to document the full vocabulary a lawyer or judge might encounter in historical sources, not because "Sassons" carried weight in any court.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the Welsh-language history of the word itself. The modern Welsh form "Saeson" (singular "Sais") is not a term of contempt in contemporary Welsh but simply the standard word for English people — a nuance the dictionary entries flatten by emphasizing the contemptuous origin without tracking the word's evolution in its home language.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Welsh Law; Anglo-Saxon Law; Laws in Wales Acts.