Definition
In law, "son" has two distinct meanings depending on context:
1. (Family law / succession) An immediate male descendant; specifically, a male child in direct lineal descent from a parent. The term is most frequently encountered in wills, deeds, and instruments of conveyance, where its scope is a recurring interpretive question. Courts have extended the term by construction to include more remote male descendants (such as grandsons) and, in some circumstances, illegitimate male children, though the presumption runs against both extensions absent clear testamentary intent.
2. (French law / pleading) "Son" as a French word meaning "his" or "her" — appearing in Law French phrases embedded in common law pleading. The most important compound is son assault demesne (his own first assault), a plea of justification in battery cases asserting that the plaintiff was the initial aggressor.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The Wiktionary entry retrieved for this term refers to "son cubano," a genre of Cuban music blending Spanish and African elements — an entirely unrelated homonym.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A male child; the male issue, or offspring, of a parent, father or mother." Webster's extends the term naturally to male descendants generally, consistent with ordinary usage.
The gap between common and legal meaning is not in the word's everyday sense but in its technical function within legal instruments. Laypeople assume "son" in a will means what it says — a male child. Legal research requires awareness that courts have treated the term as potentially expansive (reaching grandsons or illegitimate children) or as a technical "word of purchase" with specific consequences for how property passes. The ordinary reader would not anticipate these interpretive stakes.
Core Elements
For "son" in the succession and conveyance context, three analytical questions govern interpretation:
1. Word of purchase vs. word of descent: "Son" is technically a word of purchase in a devise unless the instrument's language makes clear it operates as a word of descent. This distinction determines whether property passes by the instrument's own force or through the heir-at-law.
2. Scope of the term: Does the instrument's context extend "son" to cover grandsons or other remote male descendants? Courts have permitted this extension where testamentary intent supports it, but the default meaning is the immediate male child.
3. Illegitimate children: The presumption is that "son" in a legal instrument does not include illegitimate male children unless the instrument or circumstances indicate otherwise.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with historical wills, estates records, or deeds will encounter "son" as a deceptively simple term that generated substantial litigation. The word-of-purchase versus word-of-descent distinction was a live doctrinal question in English and American courts through the nineteenth century, and its resolution affected who actually took property under an instrument.
The Law French usage — son in phrases like son assault demesne — is a separate hazard. Researchers unfamiliar with Law French pleading will encounter this usage in early common law reports and plea rolls and may not immediately recognize it as a distinct word. Anderson's entry wisely cross-references ASSAULT and TORT rather than treating this as a family law term, signaling that the French "son" belongs to a different doctrinal universe entirely.
Burrill's note that the Louisiana Civil Code applied "son" to females as well as males (art. 3522, no. 1) is a jurisdictional anomaly worth flagging: researchers working in Louisiana materials should not assume the gendered English meaning carries over.
The illegitimacy question gave rise to meaningful case law. Decisions such as Flora v. Anderson and Lind v. Burke (cited in Black's 2nd ed.) show courts working through the scope problem in the late nineteenth century. These cases are findable and useful starting points for researchers tracing the interpretive history of the term in American courts.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are largely in agreement on the core definition — immediate male descendant, correlative of "father" — but they distribute emphasis differently in useful ways.
Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's agree that "son" is technically a word of purchase in devises, but Bouvier's adds the important qualification that a testator may make it a word of descent through sufficiently explicit language, and that courts have extended it to more remote descendants. This tension between the technical default and the judicially flexible reality is the key doctrinal story, and Bouvier's captures it most completely.
Burrill's is notable for limiting its entry to the French usage and flagging the Louisiana rule — a reminder that the Louisiana Civil Code operated in a civilian tradition where French-origin terms carried different baggage.
Anderson's entry is the least informative on the English family-law sense, directing readers to CHILD and ELDEST rather than developing the succession analysis. Its cross-references to ASSAULT and TORT, however, efficiently signal the Law French dimension that other dictionaries treat separately or not at all.
What the historical dictionaries miss collectively: they do not address the treatment of adopted sons, which becomes a significant issue in twentieth-century succession law as adoption statutes proliferated. Researchers working with instruments executed after the mid-twentieth century should not rely on these sources alone for scope questions.
Jurisdictional Note
Louisiana treated "son" (as a French word) as applicable to females as well as males under art. 3522 of the Civil Code — a direct departure from the English-law assumption of gendered meaning. In most common law jurisdictions, the term presumptively denotes a male child, with illegitimate and adopted children excluded absent contrary indication, though modern statutes in many states have altered this default for intestacy and testamentary purposes.