Old legal and record term 1600s-1900s
What does et ux mean in an old deed?
In a deed, et ux is Latin shorthand for and wife: a grant by John Smith et ux conveys the land from John and his unnamed wife together. That hidden wife had rights in the land, and her name usually surfaces in the dower release or acknowledgment at the deed's foot. Read to the bottom. You will meet it in deeds, mostly 1600s-1900s.
Where it appears: deeds.
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Related terms
Browse the full genealogy records glossary for more occupations, causes of death, and legal terms.
FAQs
Where will I see et ux in the records?+
Mostly in deeds, 1600s-1900s. Clerks abbreviated freely and spelling wandered, so expect variant wordings around it.
Do these old terms still matter for family history?+
Yes, a single word can settle a relationship. Relict names a widow, et ux hides an unnamed wife, natural son points at a parent. The words are dry, but what they encode about a family is not.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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