318
NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. i. A PE . ie, 1910.
appears propitious for the birth of a word
of so questionable a colour. In such circum-
stances the formula may have been first
applied by lawyers, lawyers' clerks, or even
law students, to a guilty or supposedly
guilty person ; and, from being a cant term
at the law courts, gradually have found its
way into the common speech.
That the legal formula ' ' cul-prit " was still, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, regarded as a term of the law quite distinct from "culprit," will appear manifest from the following definition in the ' Glossographia Anglicana Nova ' (London, 1719) : " Cul prit. words used by the clerk of the arraignments when a person is in- dicted for a criminal matter."
Since writing my reply at the penultimate reference, I have managed to trace the source of the late Mr. Hickie's etymon, qu-il paroist, namely, in Wharton's ' Law Lexicon. * This book is quoted by Mr. H. Campbell Black in his above-mentioned work, where, after noticing Blackstone's etymology, he ob- serves :
" But a more plausible explanation is that given by Donaldson (cited Wharton's Lexicon), as follows : The clerk asks the prisoner, ' Are you guilty, or not guilty ? ' Pris. ' Not guilty.' Clerk. ' Qu'il paroit ' (' May it prove so ') ' How will you be tried ? ' Pris. ' By God and my country.' These words, being hurried over, came to sound ' Culprit, how will you be tried ? ' The ordinary derivation is from culpa."
This interpretation of the French phrase of course differs very materially from the one which, in my previous communications, I supposed it to have when uttered by the official or officials of the court. Who, by the way, is Donaldson ? I cannot find any one answering to his description in Alli- bone's ' Dictionary of English and American Authors.*
A further, and weighty, objection, from the ratiocinative point of view, to the ac- cepted etymology is put forward in Rapalje and Lawrence's ' Dictionary of American and English Law l :
"What militates against this derivation is the fact that here, apparently, the Crown assumes (and of necessity) that the prisoner is guilty, although the common law assumes that he is innocent until his guilt is established by strict evidence."
I am indebted to the Editor for his note at 10 S. xii. 458, calling my attention to the 1901 edition of Prof. Skeat's ' Etymological Dictionary.* That edition, needless to say, I had not seen at the time of writing, In fact, I doubt if it has found its way up to the present into any of the New York
libraries : it is not at the Astor, nor at any
of the Carnegie foundation establishments.
The edition that I used was that of 1898.
There yet remains the possibility of " cul- pate ' ? being the true etymon (see supra under culpable), as still adopted by Prof. Skeat in his 1898 edition. What seems to favour such a view is the occurrence of the identical word in a verbal form in the ' N.E.D.' where we read: " Culpate, v., rare, to blame. 1548, Hall, ' Chronicle ' : ' They
did much more culpate and blame his
prevy Councellers.'- -' Personally I should prefer this derivation to the others.
Strange to say, there is another word closely analogous in meaning to "culprit" that has also proved difficult to trace to its fountain head, to wit, ' ' felon n ; for the ' N.E.D.* remarks, s.v., " the ultimate origin is uncertain '* ; while in addition the genesis of " guilty n and " guilt " is to some extent involved in obscurity.
N. W. HILL. New York.
In treating of the subject of ' Pleas ' the late Mr. Justice J. FitzJames Stephen, at p. 297, vol. i. of his ' History of the Criminal Law of England,' says :
" Blackstone gives a curious account of the word ' culprit.' The word, he says, was coined out of two abbreviations used in taking notes in the indictment for making up the record, if necessary. When the prisoner pleaded ' not guilty,' the Clerk of Assize wrote on the indict- ment the two words non cul. for non or nient culpable not guilty. The officer of the Court then joined issue on behalf of the King, by saying that the prisoner was guilty, and that he (the officer) was ready to prove it. The note which was made of this was cul., for ' culpable,' guilty ; and prit, which was the abbreviation for paraius verificare, the two abbreviations making cul. prit.
" In the present day, for some reason which I do not pretend to understand, as soon as a prisoner pleads ' not guilty,' the Clerk of Assize writes on the indictment the word ' puts.' Does this mean ' puts himself on the country,' or can it in any way be connected with the old prit ? The forms in Court are all very old and mostly ex- tremely curious. They are preserved all the more carefully because they are mere forms, the signifi- cance of which is not usually understood by those who use them. The derivation of 'culprit' given in dictionaries is culpatus. See Johnson. Skeat, the ' Imperial.' "
Perhaps I ought to have said that pre- viously his lordship had remarked :
" For reasons which it is now difficult to represent clearly to the mind, it seems to have been considered in early times that criminals accused of felony could not be properly tried unless they consented to the trial by pleading and ' putting themselves on the country.' The
