A variant or misspelling of affidavit, a written statement made under oath before a court or notary.
A corruption or archaic variant of affidavit, which comes from Medieval Latin affidavit 'he/she has pledged on oath,' from affidāre 'to swear.' This particular spelling appears in historical documents but is now considered nonstandard.
This misspelling shows up in really old court documents and property records because spelling wasn't standardized—scribes who were translating Latin legal terms into English made different choices about how to write affidavit, creating fun spelling chaos that historians have to untangle.
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