feme covert

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English

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Etymology

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From Anglo-Norman feme (woman) covert (covered, protected).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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feme covert (plural femes covert or femes coverts)

  1. (law, now chiefly historical) A married woman.
    • 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter IX, in Rob Roy. [], volume I, Edinburgh: [] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. []; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, pages 213–214:
      []—you, Diana Vernon, spinstress, not being a femme covert; and being a convict popish recusant, are bound to repair to your own dwelling, and that by the nearest way, under penalty of being held felon to the king—[]
    • 1851, Thomas W Waterman, American Chancery Digest, volume II:
      A deed of a feme covert, to be valid, must be executed by the husband also.
    • 1986, Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America:
      Connecticut courts failed to recognize feme couvert property rights until 1723, when the legislature finally passed an act significantly reforming the law on conveyancing.
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Translations

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