Definition
An old English land measurement term denoting two plowlands and somewhat less than a half — that is, a unit of agrarian land assessment used in medieval English law. The precise acreage was not fixed but was understood relationally, as a plowland itself varied by region and soil quality. Spelman, as noted by Burrill, defined solinum more narrowly as simply a plowland, suggesting the term carried some interpretive flexibility even among historical authorities.
The term belongs to the family of medieval English land measurement units — hides, carucates, virgates, plowlands — used principally in records of tenure, taxation, and feudal obligation rather than in active conveyancing or litigation.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering solinum will almost exclusively find it in early English legal records: Domesday-adjacent documents, medieval land grants, tenure disputes, and treatises drawing on Coke's Institutes. The reference in all three source dictionaries traces to Co. Litt. 5a (Coke on Littleton), making that the primary anchor for any research involving this term. If the term appears in a historical document under review, the first step is situating it within the system of land measurement operative in that time and region — solinum does not translate cleanly into modern acreage.
The internal disagreement between sources is worth noting: Black's gives "two plowlands and somewhat less than a half," while Burrill records Spelman's divergent reading of simply "a plowland." This discrepancy is not trivial when assessing medieval land records, because the difference between one plowland and two-and-a-half plowlands represents a significant variation in the scale of a holding. Researchers working with primary sources should consult Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum directly rather than relying solely on the dictionary summaries.
Because the plowland (carucate) was itself not a fixed unit — varying from roughly 60 to 120 acres depending on soil — any calculation of actual land area from a solinum measurement requires local and period context. Corpus materials touching agrarian tenure, manorial records, or early English property law will use this and related terms as descriptive rather than precise measures.
This term does not appear in modern common law property doctrine and has no operative significance in contemporary legal proceedings. Its research value is purely historical and interpretive.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core substance: solinum is an old English law term, rooted in Latin legal usage, signifying a land measurement approximating two plowlands and somewhat less than a half, with the Co. Litt. 5a citation as the shared authority. The alignment on Coke's Institutes as the primary source is itself informative — it suggests the term's legal life was primarily as a term of art in treatise literature and commentary rather than in active judicial use.
The notable divergence is Spelman's alternative definition recorded by Burrill. Burrill is the only source to flag this conflict explicitly, making Burrill the more complete reference for this entry. Black's (both editions) omit the Spelman variant entirely, which represents a gap researchers should be aware of.
Burrill also records the adjacent entry SOLONQUE (Law French: "after; according to"), a reminder that historical legal dictionaries frequently grouped near-alphabetical terms together, and that researchers scanning pages for solinum may encounter related Law French terms on the same folio.
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Jurisdictional Note
Solinum is a term of old English law with no known application in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions outside the English medieval context. Researchers working in Scottish legal history should note that Scottish land measurement developed its own distinct vocabulary (the merkland, oxgate, etc.) and solinum would not be expected to appear in Scottish records.
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