feme covert

English

WOTD – 16 August 2011

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /fɛmˈkʌvət/

Noun

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.

Related terms

• feme sole
• feme sole merchant

Translations

law, a married woman

• Finnish: aviovaimo (fi)
• Russian: заму́жняя же́нщина f (zamúžnjaja žénščina)
• Spanish: mujer casada f