Table 1: Words from Old French yfx文献综述

French words Explanation in English 

alien or aliene to transfer or make over to another, to convey or transfer the property of a thing from one person to another.

feme covert a married woman, which is generally used in reference to the formal legal disabilities of a married woman, as compared with the condition of a feme sole.

feme sole a single woman, including those who have been married, but whose marriage has been dissolved by death or porce, and, for most purpose, those woman who are judicially separated from their husbands.

negotiorun  gestor one who, without any mandate or authority, assumes to take charge of an affair or concern of another person, in the latter’s absence, but for his interest.

estoppel a rule of evidence whereby a person is precluded from denying the truth of a statement of facts he has previously asserted.

fee simple absolute an interest in land that, being the broadest property interest allowed by law, endures until the current holder dies without heirs.

Besides the French words, legal English words still includes a large amount of legal terms inherited from Latin. Latin has always occupied a prominent position in the study of legal English. As early as 597 AD., Latin has been melted into English, especially in the Old English period in 14th century and 15th, many Latin words came into English directly or indirectly through French. During 17th and 18th centuries, many dictionary writers and grammarians felt that English was imperfect because of the polysemy whereas Latin was perfect, they deliberately made up lots of English words from Latin words, especially in the field of law (Xu Yaosong, 2002:460-463). 

In a word, there are two types of these Latin-influenced words, one type is those words which are borrowed directly from Latin and we can recognize this type easily, such as:

flagrante delicto(现行犯), ipso jure(依法律), eat inde sine die(立即), crimen falsi(伪证罪), poena capitalis(死刑), de facto fort(事实上侵权行为), action in persinam(债权诉讼), proviso(限制性条款), alibi(不再犯罪现场), ad initio(自始、从头开始), ordre public(公共政策), uberrima fides(最大诚信), ad hoc(特别、临时), ultra vires(越权), inter alia(除了别的以外), ex parte(单方面地、片面地), prima faie(初步的、表面的), etc..

The other type is those words which assimilated by English and it is quite hard to find their Latin origin, such as: affirm, compensate, detention, derelict, deprive, injury and negotiate.

2.1.2 Words from Old and Middle English

As mentioned earlier, there are three stages of English language development. The first one is the Old English language, which is also called Anglo-Saxon. It was spoken from about AD. 600 to 1100. Old English is the name given to the Germanic language spoken in the southern part of the island of Britain before the Norman Conquest in 1066. It is the ancestor of the Modern English spoken today, although it is quite different in appearance and sound at first glance. The second stage, Middle English, was brought about by the Norman Conquest of1066. It is a mixture of Old English with Norman French and Latin and much more similar to modern English. So Old English and Middle English have a great impact on Modern English. And those words from Old and Middle English is also called the archaic words, which is quite hard for those people who have rare access to legal documents to understand. But at the same time, the employment of archaic words can make the legal documents objective and convincing. Here the author will mainly discuss three types of archaic words: