Definition
An obsolete Old English term with two recorded meanings in historical legal usage:
1. A field or tract of open land. Used in early English land law and conveyancing records.
2. The jaw, cheek, or cheekbone — and by extension, the molar or cheek-tooth ("wang-tooth"). This anatomical sense appears in archaic attestation formulas used to authenticate sealed instruments.
Neither meaning survives in active legal usage. The term is encountered exclusively in historical documents and glossaries.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Vulgar slang for the penis.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The jaw, jawbone, or cheekbone. Also a slap or blow (provincial English). "Wang tooth" referred to a molar. Marked as obsolete or provincial even by 1913.
The gap between historical legal meaning and modern common meaning is total. A researcher encountering "wang" in an Old English legal record should not import any modern connotation. The word had two entirely unrelated senses in historical usage — one topographical, one anatomical — neither of which has any connection to its current colloquial meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with pre-Norman and early Middle English land records may encounter "wang" in descriptions of field boundaries or estate surveys. In that context, it functions as a topographical descriptor comparable to other Old English field-name elements (croft, lea, mead). The term is more likely to appear in footnotes, glossaries, or antiquarian commentary than in the primary instruments themselves, since most surviving texts have been translated or transcribed.
The attestation-formula usage — biting wax with the "wang-tooth" as a witnessing act — is a narrow but genuine historical practice noted by Blount and carried forward in Burrill. Researchers examining the history of sealing and authentication of deeds may find this usage relevant as evidence of how physical acts of the body were incorporated into notarial and witnessing customs before widespread literacy.
The principal research trap here is anachronism: modern readers unfamiliar with obsolete English may misread the term, misindex it, or dismiss the surrounding text. Transcription errors are also possible in digitized corpora, where "wang" may be confused with "ward," "way," or other short Old English field-name elements depending on hand and reproduction quality.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill draws directly on Blount's Nomo-Lexicon for both senses, quoting the Chaucer reference and the wax-biting attestation custom without independent elaboration. This entry is representative of Burrill's treatment of obsolete Saxon terms: brief, derivative of Blount, and preserved largely for completeness rather than practical legal utility.
Webster's 1913 confirms the anatomical meaning and its provincial/obsolete status even in the nineteenth century, lending support to Burrill's characterization. No historical legal dictionary in the standard corpus — Burrill, Black's early editions, Bouvier — treats "wang" as a term of active legal art. Its presence in Burrill reflects the dictionary's encyclopedic commitment to Old English legal vocabulary rather than any ongoing doctrinal significance.
Modern legal dictionaries omit the term entirely, which is the correct editorial judgment.