Definition
A Latin term from old European law meaning grain that has been threshed — that is, beaten or shaken out of the husk or stalk. The word described processed grain as distinguished from grain still in the sheaf. It appears in medieval legal and manorial contexts where the condition or quantity of agricultural produce had legal significance, such as in assessments of renders, dues, or customary obligations owed to a lord.
Why It Matters in Research
Scussus is a narrow term of medieval agricultural law with no surviving doctrinal life in modern common law. Researchers will encounter it only in sources treating medieval manorial obligations, feudal dues, or early European agricultural customs. Its relevance is almost entirely paleographic and linguistic: when reading original Latin documents, cartularies, or manorial rolls, a researcher needs to recognize that scussus describes a specific stage of grain processing and is not interchangeable with general terms for grain or harvest.
The term matters most when parsing the precise scope of a customary obligation. If a tenant owed a render of scussus rather than grain on the stalk, the distinction could affect how much was actually owed after the threshing loss was accounted for. Misreading the term — or treating it as synonymous with a broader grain term — could distort the analysis of what a historical document actually required.
There is also a minor transcription hazard worth noting. The Black's Law Dictionary second edition renders the term with a typographic error ("Shnaken" for "Shaken"), a common artifact of early print-to-type conversion in historical dictionaries. Researchers relying on that edition should not take the garbled spelling as evidence of a variant meaning or a different term.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries are in close agreement. Black's (both editions) and Burrill define scussus as grain that has been shaken or beaten out — that is, threshed — and all three trace the term to Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum, the standard reference for medieval Latin legal and institutional vocabulary. No source offers a more expansive definition or applies the term beyond its agricultural sense.
Burrill adds one notable detail: he glosses scussus as equivalent to excussus, the more classical Latin form of the same participle, derived from excutere (to shake out). This clarification is genuinely useful because researchers working across different medieval Latin sources may encounter excussus in the same context and need to recognize the terms as functionally synonymous.
Burrill's entry also contains a fragmented passage referencing "ings (scuta)" and the deception of purchasers in selecting good cloth — almost certainly a typographic bleed from an adjacent entry in the original source. This fragment has no bearing on the definition of scussus and should be disregarded. It is a useful reminder that early compiled law dictionaries, set in type from handwritten copy, occasionally contain such interpolations, and that critical reading of the source text is necessary.
No source offers case authority or statutory grounding for the term, which is consistent with its purely archaic and descriptive character.
Jurisdictional Note
Scussus has no current application in any common law jurisdiction. It belongs to the vocabulary of medieval European, primarily English and continental, agrarian law. Researchers working in Scots law or civil law traditions drawing on medieval Latin sources may encounter it in the same contexts as English manorial records.