Time immemorial is a phrase meaning time extending beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition. The implication is that the subject referred to is, or can be regarded as, indefinitely ancient. The phrase is one of the few cases in the English Language where the postmodifier is an adjective - some other legal terms such as attorney general and court martial follow the pattern, largely due to the influence of Norman French. Modern historians, anthropologists, and others have often criticized the use of the term as a view of contemporary conditions as without history, i.e. as essential and unchanging in nature.
The term has been formally defined for some purposes.
- In English law, time immemorial means "a time before legal history, and beyond legal memory." In 1276, this time was fixed by statute as the 3rd September 1189, the date of the coronation of King Richard I (Richard the Lionheart). Proof of unbroken possession or use of any right since that date made it unnecessary to establish the original grant. In 1832, the plan of dating legal memory from a fixed time was abandoned; instead, it was held that rights which had been enjoyed for twenty years (or as against the Crown thirty years) should not be impeached merely by proving that they had not been enjoyed before. 1
- The Court of Chivalry is said to have defined the period before 1066 as "time immemorial" for the purposes of heraldry.23
Similar expressions include "time out of mind" and "since the mind of man runneth not to the contrary."
References
- ^ The public domain Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
- ^ History of Heraldry
- ^ http://www.infokey.com/hall/herald.htm
See also
- From Time Immemorial, a 1984 book about the Arab-Israeli conflict by Joan Peters
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 29 December 2008, at 11:39.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by PediaView.com. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with PediaView.com.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Time Immemorial".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.