Definition for AID

AID, n.

  1. Help; succor; support; assistance. – Watts.
  2. The person who aids or yields support; a helper; an auxiliary; also the thing that aids or yields succor.
  3. In English law, a subsidy or tax granted by parliament, and making a part of the king's revenue. In France, aids are equivalent to customs or duties on imports and exports. – Encyc.
  4. In England, a tax paid by a tenant to his lord; originally a mere gift, which afterward became a right demandable by the lord. The aids of this kind we chiefly three. 1) To ransom the lord when a prisoner. 2) To make the lord's eldest son a knight. 3) To marry the lord's eldest daughter. Blackstone.
  5. An aiddecamp, so called by abbreviation.
  6. To pray in aid, in law, is to call in a person interested in a title, to assist in defending it. Thus a tenant for life may pray in the aid of him in remainder or reversion; that is, he may pray or petition that he may be joined in the suit to aid or help maintain the title. This act or petition is called aid-prayer. – Cowel. Blackstone. Court of aids, in France, is a court which has cognizance of causes respecting duties or customs. – Encyc.

Return to page 71 of the letter “A”.