Definition
In Law French, *tuer* means to kill or slay. The term appears in medieval English legal records, Year Books, and pleadings as the operative verb for the act of killing — whether of a person or, as the historical sources confirm, an animal. The past participial form *tue* means slain. The related noun *tuerie* denotes slaughter.
Tuer functions as a technical term of pleading in the Norman French that dominated English legal records from the Conquest through the late medieval period. It carries no technical limitation to unlawful killing; it is a descriptive term for the act itself, with culpability determined by surrounding pleading and context.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering Year Book entries or early plea rolls must recognize *tuer* as the standard Law French verb for killing rather than as a term of art carrying inherent criminal or tortious meaning. Its presence in a record does not itself signal homicide proceedings; the same word appears in game law disputes, forest law cases, and actions sounding in trespass for the killing of livestock or game.
The Burrill example — *rompur le lees & tuer la daim* (broke the leash and killed the doe) — is drawn from a Year Book of Henry VI and illustrates the term's reach into forest and game law contexts, where the killing of deer was a serious matter of royal prerogative, not a homicide. Researchers conflating *tuer* with purely criminal pleading will misread the character of such proceedings.
Because Law French orthography was inconsistent across scribes and centuries, variant spellings may appear in manuscript sources. Researchers working with digitized Year Books or plea rolls should search variant forms and not rely on a single spelling.
The term becomes largely invisible in post-medieval English legal materials as Law French receded from pleading practice following the reforms of the mid-seventeenth century. By the time of the formal prohibition on Law French in legal proceedings (1650s, with a partial restoration and final displacement through the eighteenth century), *tuer* had been replaced by English equivalents in formal records. Sources after roughly 1700 will not use the term except in historical commentary or glossaries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the most direct treatment: *tuer* is defined as "to kill, or slay," with *tue* as the past participial form (slain) and *tuerie* as slaughter. Burrill draws on Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* for *tuerie* and cites a Year Book reference (Michaelmas Term, 18 Henry VI, folio 6) for the compound phrase involving the leash and the doe.
The Law French dictionaries underlying Burrill — including Kelham and the sources Burrill abbreviates as "L. Fr. Dict." — are the primary scholarly infrastructure for this term. Researchers should consult Kelham directly when tracing the term into variant Year Book passages, as Burrill's glossary function necessarily compresses source material.
No significant divergence exists among the historical glossary authorities on the core meaning. The interest lies not in dispute among sources but in the range of legal contexts the term appears across — criminal pleas, forest law, trespass — which the dictionaries reflect only partially through their illustrative citations.
Jurisdictional Note
Tuer is specific to the Anglo-Norman legal tradition and appears in English legal records. It has no operative presence in Scots law sources or in civilian traditions, where Latin equivalents (*occidere*, *interficere*) perform the same function.