Definition
In old English and Anglo-Norman law (Law French), *tener* means "to hold" or "to keep." The term appears in two distinct legal contexts in medieval English legal instruments and pleading:
1. To hold (as in tenure): Used in conveyancing formulas to denote the grantee's right of holding land. Most commonly encountered in the habendum clause — *a aver et tener* ("to have and to hold") — which defined the estate conveyed and the persons who would take it.
2. To keep out or withhold: Used in the context of wrongful dispossession, describing the act of excluding a rightful claimant from seisin of land. *Tener hors de droit heire* means to keep out the right heir; the related construction *teigne hors l'neveu* describes an uncle or aunt holding seisin against the nephew's rightful claim.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A surname only. No common legal or general meaning survives in modern English.
Historical common usage: Not independently recorded in Webster's 1913 as an English word.
The gap is complete: *tener* has no surviving general English meaning. Researchers encountering it in documents are working entirely in Law French legal vocabulary, and the specific sense — "hold" in the tenure sense versus "withhold" in the dispossession sense — must be resolved from context.
Common Confusion
*Tener* in its conveyancing sense (to hold) is closely bound to the word *tenir* and related forms in Law French, all deriving from the Latin *tenere*. Researchers should not conflate the neutral conveyancing use ("to have and to hold") with the adversarial use ("to keep out"), though both appear in the same body of medieval sources. The habendum formula is a term of art in valid conveyancing; the withholding usage signals a legal wrong.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with medieval English deeds, plea rolls, and early treatises will encounter *tener* as a term of art in at least two formal registers. Failure to distinguish the register produces misreadings.
In conveyancing records, *a aver et tener* is the classic habendum formula and should be read alongside words of limitation (*à luy et à ses heires*, etc.) to determine what estate passed. This formula persisted in English and American deeds well into the modern period, often reduced to the anglicized "to have and to hold." The *tener* element in this formula is not merely ceremonial — historically it triggered the tenure relationship between lord and tenant.
In plea and treatise contexts, *tener hors* constructions identify the wrongful act at the heart of actions touching on seisin and descent. Britton, one of Burrill's sources here, is a late-thirteenth-century treatise written in Law French that describes the law of the crown. Its usage of *tener hors* in chapters addressing inheritance disputes reflects pleading practice of the period and is an important signal that a passage concerns exclusion from inheritance, not consensual holding.
Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should note that *tener* as a standalone headword is rare; it will more commonly appear embedded in phrases. Keyword searching for the term alone will underperform relative to searching for the full habendum formula or the *tener hors* construction.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the sole historical dictionary source here, and its entry is appropriately spare. It correctly identifies both the conveyancing and the withholding senses, anchors them in primary sources (Littleton section 625 for the habendum formula; Britton chapters 65 and 119 for the dispossession usage), and supplies illustrative Law French phrases with translations.
What Burrill does not address — and what researchers should supply from other sources — is the doctrinal significance of the habendum clause in which *tener* appears. The clause's function in defining the estate, and the relationship between *avoir* (to have) and *tener* (to hold) within it, was a subject of considerable common law analysis. Littleton himself, and Coke's commentary upon him, are the primary authorities for that analysis and lie beyond Burrill's dictionary scope.
No divergence among historical sources is possible to assess here, as only one source was submitted. The entry is reliable as far as it goes.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is historical and rooted in English medieval law. It has no independent jurisdictional variation across modern common law systems, though the habendum formula descended from it remains a feature of Anglo-American conveyancing practice and continues to appear in modern deeds across common law jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Seisin (for the legal significance of holding land and wrongful exclusion); Fee Simple (for the estate typically conveyed in habendum formulas using *a aver et tener*); Words of Limitation (for the phrases following *tener* that determined the estate granted).