Aid

AID, v.t. [L. adjuto.
To help; to assist; to support, either by furnishing strength or means to effect a purpose, or to prevent or remove evil.
AID, n.
1. Help; succor; support; assistance.
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.
4. In England, a tax paid by a tenant to his lord; originally a mere gift, which afterwards became a right demandable by the lord. the aids of this king were 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.
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.
Court of aids, in France, is a court which has cognizance of causes respecting duties or customs.

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