[f. COURT sb.1 11.] The style of handwriting in use in the English law-courts from the 16th c. to the reign of Geo. II. when it was abolished by statute.
1593. Shaks., 2 Hen. VI., IV. ii. 100. He can make Obligations, and write Court hand.
c. 1640. Shirley, Capt. Underwit, II. i. in Bullen, O. Pl., II. 339. Papers defil’d with Court hand and long dashes, Or Secretarie lines.
1650. in Neal, Hist. Purit. (1738), IV. 32. All writs shall be in a legible hand, and not in court-hand.
1731. Act 4 Geo. II., c. 26. Be it enacted … That … all Proceedings whatsoever in any Courts of Justice … shall be written in such a common legible Hand and Character, as the Acts of Parliament are usually ingrossed in … and not in any Hand commonly called Court Hand, and in Words at Length and not abbreviated.
1752. Johnson, Rambler, No. 198, ¶ 3. Ability to draw a lease and read the court hands.
1755. Smollett, Quix. (1803), I. 242. By no means employ a scrivener, who may write it in such an unintelligible court-hand, that Satan himself could not understand it.
1776–1879. A. Wright, Court Hand Restored, Introd. (ed. 9), p. x. I have pitched upon the Court-Hand and its Contractions, as the best and most difficult of the Old Law Hands.
