Definition
An archaic Law French verb meaning "to sound" or "to have an essential quality." In legal usage, an action is said to *soun* (or, in its anglicized form, *sound*) in a particular remedy when its essential nature or gravamen tends toward that remedy rather than another. The phrase most commonly appears in the maxim that an action *sounds in damages*, meaning the action is directed toward monetary compensation rather than specific recovery of a thing or performance of an act.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A surname.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Listed as obsolete; related to "auger."
The common English word "sound" (as adjective, noun, or verb) bears no meaningful connection to this legal usage. The legal term derives from Law French and carries a specialized technical meaning about the juridical character of a cause of action — a meaning invisible to anyone approaching the word through ordinary English.
Common Confusion
SOUN / SOUND IN DAMAGES vs. CLAIM FOR SPECIFIC RELIEF: Researchers may encounter the phrase "sounds in damages" and mistake it for a colloquial description. It is a term of art. An action that sounds in damages is one where the court cannot restore the specific thing sought — only compensate the plaintiff with money. This distinction determined, and in many jurisdictions still determines, whether equitable or legal relief is available, and it carried procedural consequences under common law pleading that do not survive into modern notice pleading systems.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a creature of historical sources. Researchers working in Year Books, early English pleading records, or treatises on common law procedure will encounter *soun* and its anglicized descendants regularly. The phrase "sounds in damages" persists in modern case law and legal writing, but the Law French root *soun* appears only in historical materials — primarily Year Books of the early fourteenth century onward.
The critical navigational point: when reading pre-modern pleading treatises (Stephen's Principles of Pleading being the key bridge text), the concept this word captures — the essential character or tendency of an action — is foundational to understanding the distinction between actions at law and suits in equity, between legal and equitable remedies, and between personal and real actions. A researcher who encounters *soun* in a Year Book citation and cannot place it will misread arguments about what kind of court had jurisdiction and what relief was available.
The phrase "sounds in damages" remains alive in modern American and English law, particularly in discussions of whether a claim is equitable or legal in character — relevant to jury trial rights under the Seventh Amendment in federal practice, and analogous provisions in state constitutions. The historical root in *soun* gives this modern phrase its full meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary shelf source for this term, and his treatment is characteristically compressed but precise. He traces *soun* to Law French, cites the Year Books (P. 1 Edw. II, f. 6) as the locus of early usage, and anchors the definition in Stephen's Pleading — the standard nineteenth-century authority on common law pleading doctrine. Burrill's entry does the essential work: it identifies *soun* as a term about the essential quality of an action, not merely a description of outcome.
No other major historical dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus (Bouvier, Black) carry a dedicated entry for *soun* as a Law French term, though the anglicized phrase "sounds in damages" appears in pleading discussions throughout those sources. This gap means Burrill is the definitive shelf source for the Law French form; researchers tracing the anglicized phrase into nineteenth-century American materials should shift to Bouvier and Black.
Jurisdictional Note
The underlying doctrine — that actions sound in damages or in specific relief — is common to all common law jurisdictions. The specific Law French term *soun* is a historical artifact of English practice and will not appear in American sources except as a historical reference. The substantive distinction the term captures, however, remains jurisdictionally significant wherever legal and equitable remedies are distinguished.