Definition
An archaic Law French term meaning "old" or "former," used specifically in the compound phrase *veelez viscountz* to denote old or former sheriffs. The term appears in early Anglo-Norman legal records and has no surviving functional role in modern law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete spelling of *veal* (the meat of a calf).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not listed; the spelling had already fallen out of common use by the nineteenth century.
The gap here is complete: the common-language remnant of *veel* points toward a culinary term derived from the French *veau* (calf), while the legal usage derives from a distinct Old French root meaning "old." A researcher encountering *veel* in a manuscript context must determine immediately which register — culinary or administrative — is operative. In legal records, the word is never about livestock.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English administrative records, pipe rolls, or Year Book materials may encounter *veel* or the phrase *veelez viscountz* in contexts discussing the tenure or accountability of outgoing sheriffs. The term signals a procedural or administrative distinction between a sitting sheriff and one who has left office — a distinction that carried real consequences for who bore liability for unsettled accounts or unexecuted writs during a transition of office.
The primary trap is the orthographic overlap with the food term. Transcribed records that have passed through non-legal hands may gloss *veel* as a reference to veal — an error that produces nonsense in administrative contexts. Researchers using digitized or calendar-transcribed sources should verify any instance of *veel* against the surrounding Latin or Law French to confirm the administrative sense.
Because the term belongs to a narrow stratum of Law French administrative vocabulary, it will rarely appear in isolation. It almost always surfaces as part of a fixed phrase. Searching for *veel* alone in a corpus will be less productive than searching for *veelez viscountz* as a unit.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source to record this term, and its entry is minimal: it supplies the meaning, the illustrative phrase *veelez viscountz*, and attributes the usage to Kelham's *Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language* (1779), which remains one of the standard references for Law French vocabulary in English legal records. Burrill does not elaborate on procedural context or date range of usage.
The sparseness of the entry reflects the term's narrow circulation. It does not appear in Jacob's *Law Dictionary*, Tomlin's *Law Dictionary*, or Bouvier's *Law Dictionary*, suggesting it was already understood as a specialized antiquarian item by the time those works were compiled. Researchers should treat Kelham as the authoritative upstream source and consult it directly for fuller philological context.