Definition
An archaic Anglo-French legal term for a bull (the male bovine animal). The term appears in early medieval English legal records, drawn directly from the Latin *taurus*, and was used in pleadings and year book entries to identify the specific animal at issue in disputes involving livestock.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A fictional creature resembling a centaur, with the lower body of a four-or-more-legged animal and an upper body of an anthropomorphic or human figure. A term associated with fantasy literature and gaming.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The constellation Taurus. Marked as obsolete, with attribution to Chaucer.
The legal term has no meaningful connection to either common usage. In legal records, *taur* is a plain livestock term — a bull — appearing in property and trespass pleadings. Researchers encountering it in medieval sources should not expect any overlap with its astronomical or fictional associations.
Why It Matters in Research
TAUR is a narrow, archaic term unlikely to appear in any legal context outside of very early English Year Books and medieval plea rolls. Its significance to corpus researchers is almost entirely paleographic and terminological: a reader working through Year Book entries from the reign of Edward III may encounter the word and need to confirm it refers simply to a bull, not to any technical legal category.
The term carries no doctrinal weight of its own. It is not a term of art in property law, tort law, or animal law in any modern sense. Its presence in a pleading signals that the case involves a bull — likely a trespass, impoundment, or damage to crops dispute — but the legal analysis turns on surrounding doctrine (distress, trespass *quare clausum fregit*, *de vetito namio*, and similar actions), not on the word *taur* itself.
Researchers should note that Law French and Law Latin livestock terminology in Year Books is not always consistent. *Taur* (or *taurus*) for bull may appear alongside *vacca* (cow), *bos* (ox), and *averia* (cattle generally). Conflating these can misread the specific animal in dispute, which occasionally mattered for valuation or for establishing ownership in replevin and detinue actions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only historical dictionary entry located for this term. The entry is brief: it identifies *taur* as Law French derived from Latin *taurus*, defines it as a bull, and cites a single Year Book entry — Yearbook, Hilary Term, 9 Edward III, folio 6. Burrill offers no further doctrinal elaboration, which reflects the term's function as descriptive vocabulary rather than a legal concept requiring interpretation.
No additional historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus (Bouvier, Black, Tomlin, Cowell, Jacob) carry a discrete entry for *taur*. This is consistent with the term's role as ordinary livestock vocabulary embedded in pleadings rather than a term generating its own legal commentary.
Jurisdictional Note
TAUR is specific to early English legal records and has no recognized usage in Scots law, civil law jurisdictions, or American legal materials. Researchers working in non-English medieval sources will encounter *taurus* in Latin plea rolls rather than the Anglo-French *taur*.