Utlagarie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The legal condition of a person formally declared outside the protection of the law, often as a punishment for serious crime
2. Outlawry, meaning the formal process by which someone was placed beyond legal protection and lost their civil rights
3. A medieval legal status in which a person was excluded from the law's protection, either as a result of the process or the state it produced

Etymology: Anyone declared an outlaw in medieval England had lost the protection of the king's courts, so harming them carried no legal penalty. The status was called "utlagarie," a Middle English noun for the condition of being put outside the law. It came from Anglo-Norman and Old French forms of "utlagerie," which grew from the older word "utlaga," meaning a person outside the law. That in turn came from Old Norse "útlagi," and English had the root in the Old English "utlaga" well before the Norman period. The formation is transparent: "ut," meaning "out," plus "lagu," meaning "law," with the suffix "-arie" or "-erie" attached to form a noun of condition or practice. The Middle English spelling shows the word still being shaped by French endings. It was a legal term, and it faded from ordinary English as the modern "outlawry" took its place.