[a. F. brocard, akin to med.L. brocarda, brocardicorum opus, a name given to the ‘sentences’ of Burchard or Brocard, bishop of Worms in the 11th c., who compiled twenty books of ‘Regulæ Ecclesiasticæ.’]
1. Law. An elementary principle or maxim.
a. 1624. Swinburne, Spousals (1686), 184. Because the Brocardes or contrary Conclusions, rather breed brabbles, than pacific Contentions.
1759. Fountainhall, Decisions, I. 243 (Jam.). Alledged, He was minor, and so non tenetur placitare super hæreditate paterna. Answered, The brocard meets not.
1785. Arnot, Trials (1812), 298. An intention to commit iniquity is not a crime at common law, according to the well known brocard, ‘Cogitationis poenam in foro nemo patitur.’
1825. Scott, Betrothed, Introd. Societas mater discordiarum is a brocard as ancient and as veritable.
1862. M. Napier, Mem. Visct. Dundee, II. 10. Dolus latet in generalibus is a brocard of the civilians.
2. gen.
1836–7. Sir W. Hamilton, Metaph., xiii. I. 234, note. The scholastic brocard pointing to the difficulties of the study of self: Reflexiva cogitatio facile fit deflexiva.
1856. Ferrier, Inst. Metaph., 261. The scholastic brocard, which has been adopted as the tenth counter-proposition, is the fundamental article in the creed of … ‘the sensualists.’
ǁ 3. Biting speech, cutting gibe. (A French sense.)
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. III. iii. 143. Lameth … is met in those Assembly corridors by nothing but Royalist brocards; sniffs, huffs, and open insults.
