Definition
A Law French adverb meaning "still," "again," or "once more." Used in early English legal pleading and Year Book records to indicate continuity of a prior state or to assert that a previous condition or right persisted. The term appears most commonly in compound phrases such as *uncore jugement de breve* (still judgment of the writ) and similar formulaic expressions in medieval common law proceedings.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *uncore* in primary sources — particularly Year Books, plea rolls, or early common law reports — should treat it as a term of pleading art rather than a substantive legal concept. Its function is grammatical and procedural within a formulaic phrase, not definitional on its own. The term almost never appears in isolation; its meaning depends entirely on the phrase it anchors.
The critical navigational point: *uncore* and its compound expressions belong to a stratum of Law French legal vocabulary that was largely obsolete by the seventeenth century and survives only in Year Book contexts and early treatise references. Researchers using Law Mind corpus materials from the Tudor period onward are unlikely to encounter it in active use, but may find it cited historically when pleaders or commentators reference earlier practice. Pay close attention to whether a source is using the phrase descriptively (citing old practice) or operatively (within a live pleading document), as the distinction affects how the passage should be read.
The single Burrill citation — *Yearb. M. 10 Edw. III. 15* — places the term squarely in the early fourteenth century Year Book tradition. Researchers working in medieval legal history should verify Year Book citations against modern scholarly editions where available, as pagination and folio references in older dictionaries do not always align with current critical editions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry in the Law Mind shelf sources. Burrill defines *uncore* concisely as "Still; again; once more," correctly identifying its Law French grammatical role and grounding it in a specific Year Book reference. The entry is brief because the term warrants no more: it is a functional particle of medieval pleading language, not a legal concept with contested meaning or doctrinal content.
No other shelf dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — including Bouvier, Black, or Jacob — carry entries for *uncore*, which is consistent with the term's extreme archaism by the time those works were compiled. The absence is itself informative: by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the term had receded fully into historical reference. Researchers should not interpret that silence as a conflict among sources; it reflects chronological stratification in the dictionary literature.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is exclusively a feature of early English common law practice and has no operative use in any modern common law jurisdiction. It does not appear in American, Canadian, or post-seventeenth-century English legal practice as a live term.