Definition
WOL is an archaic legal abbreviation appearing in early English common law texts and manuscript traditions, used as a shorthand rendering of terms associated with the writ and pleading vocabulary of medieval English practice. In the context in which Burrill records it, WOL appears in proximity to discussions of withernam and related replevin proceedings — the process by which a sheriff, unable to find distrained cattle for return, was authorized to take substitute goods from the distraining party. The abbreviation does not carry an independent substantive meaning but functions as a scribal contraction embedded in Latin and Law French legal manuscripts, most prominently associated with Bracton-era pleading texts.
Because the source material is fragmentary and the abbreviation appears without a standalone gloss in Burrill, WOL should be understood as a textual artifact of historical legal manuscripts rather than a term of art with a settled, freestanding legal definition.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): WOL is an initialism for "wake-on-LAN," a networking standard that allows a computer to be powered on remotely by a network signal.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 treats "wol" as an obsolete form, directing readers to the second definition of "will" and attributing usage to Chaucer — indicating it functioned as an archaic spelling of "will" (meaning "to wish" or "to intend") in Middle English.
Neither the modern technical initialism nor the Chaucerian spelling has any connection to the legal abbreviation. Researchers encountering WOL in a legal manuscript context should not import either common-language meaning. The legal usage is paleographic and procedural, not linguistic.
Common Confusion
WOL is most likely to be confused with WON (withernamium) or misread as part of adjacent Latin phrases in Bracton-era manuscript transcriptions. Researchers may also encounter it conflated with abbreviated forms of "woll" (wool) in commercial law records of the same period, where wool contracts and distress of livestock frequently intersected. Context — particularly the presence of replevin or withernam vocabulary nearby — is the primary tool for disambiguation.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal manuscripts, particularly those engaging with Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae or with Year Book materials touching replevin and distress, may encounter WOL as a scribal contraction. Its significance is navigational: it signals proximity to withernam procedure, which was the remedy available when distrained goods had been driven out of the county or concealed to defeat a replevin writ.
The Burrill passage locates WOL within the conceptual territory of waste to the estate and the sheriff's secondary seizure authority — two topics that generated significant manuscript variation across copies of Bracton. Researchers should treat any occurrence of WOL as a flag to cross-check the surrounding Latin text against standard Bracton editions and against Crabb's Real Property and Hilliard's Real Property, both of which Burrill cites in this passage and which provide more accessible treatments of the underlying doctrine.
One practical trap: digitized legal manuscript databases may not index WOL consistently, either absorbing it into surrounding text strings or misreading it as "vol" (volume) in optical character recognition. Manual inspection of the source folio or a reliable print transcription is advisable before drawing research conclusions from any single digital instance.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill does not define WOL as a standalone entry but uses it within a passage describing the withernam proceeding under Bracton, specifically the scenario where distrained animals cannot be found because they have been driven elsewhere or out of the county in fraud of the replevin process. The phrase rendered near WOL — "Si autem [averia] inveniri non possunt, eo quod alibi fugata sunt forte, vel extra comitatum in fraudem" — is a recognizable passage from Bracton's treatment of withernam.
Burrill's dictionary does not provide a direct translation or gloss of WOL itself, and no other major historical legal dictionary in the standard reference shelf (Black's, Bouvier's, Tomlin's, Cunningham's, Jacob's) carries a WOL entry. This absence confirms that the term did not achieve status as a recognized term of art but remained a manuscript abbreviation embedded in source texts. Researchers should not expect to find it defined in any later legal dictionary tradition; its life is in the primary manuscript record, not the lexicographical one.
Jurisdictional Note
WOL, as a scribal abbreviation from Bracton-era texts, is specific to English common law manuscript tradition. It has no counterpart in Scottish, civil law, or American legal sources. American replevin law adopted the substance of withernam doctrine in modified forms but not the abbreviation or the Latin textual apparatus in which WOL appears.