Foreign Words, Phrases and Terms
Foreign Words, Phrases and Terms Used in Real Estate Laws & Legal Working
A Quick Guide – Phase I
This List is to briefly describe a few of the very common terms used in Real Estate legal working in our country that have a pure foreign origin. Most of these are Latin; whole a few are French. [Knowing the origin of each word is useful only for those who wish to learn more – and which we can help, for a small fee, of course!]
Here goes!
- Ab Initio:
This is a Latin phrase which means from the very beginning.
And as luck would have it, this phrase begins this list!
- Ad hoc:
This is a bad management practice!
The phrase implies that the problems are dealt with as they arise. There is no planning in the working system, or control.
You can also have an ad-hoc committee of people getting together to bring about a solution to an immediate problem. Say, a building has caught fire; and the managing committee members are away, then those present can come together to take care of the immediate problem solving decisions.
- Ad Infinitum:
You cannot call it Google; but it means the same!
- Adjourned sine die:
Please see “sine die”.
- Aide Memoire:
This can be document or a slip of paper, or a note to remind you of something lest you forget it.
It can also be a person to remind you of your appointments. A personal secretary works like that!
- Alias:
This is a word used to describe the second name that many have been given to you!
Very often the tag, ‘aka’, the full version being, ‘also known as’, is also used.
This is very nice for famous people. Very few people responded to Mr Yusuf Khan. But when you said, ‘Dilip Kumar’, their faces would light up in wonderous glow.
So, I needed to say Mr Yusuf Khan, alias Dilip Kumar to make my description of him more effective.
- Alibi:
You really need this you are being chased by the police for a crime you may not have committed. In not just crime thrillers, or films of that genre, the innocent person has been saved by his alibi of not being at the scene of the crime.
The attendance register in the ‘bad old days’ of college was a good alibi! If you were marked present in a class, you could not have gone out and committed any crime in the vicinity!
An alibi, thus, is a proof of your being somewhere else, where you are being accused of, and were actually not there.
For example, your wife thinks you were with a girlfriend; and a few men can vouch for the fact that you were with them at that time, when your wife thinks you were out with your gf!
- Bona fide:
Something, or someone, that, or who, is genuine is called by this phrase!
- Caveat Emptor:
This is very important in Real Estate: “Buyer Better Beware”. Following this doctrine the buyer becomes responsible for all the defects, if any, in the goods purchased.
This is operative in Real Estate as a complete precaution.
Mostly the onus of proving the lack of defects is on the seller than the buyer.
- Caveat:
This is submission we can make to a Court, to avoid issuing ex-parte orders without hearing us, first.
You may often hear a lawyer saying that he will “file a caveat in the High Court”.
Emanating from the “caveat emptor” conceit, this is part of a system to be more careful.
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Foreign-Words-in-Real-Estate-Laws-Phase-I