This article is dedicated to the phenomenon of amicable settlements, which gained increasing popularity in Welsh society during the 12th and 13th centuries, and to the role played by arbiters in this process. Surviving sources concerning the conclusion of such settlements attest to the diversity of methods and forms used in formalizing official agreements. A significant portion of the extant evidence consists of charters, sealed letters and chirographs. Only a small number of settlements were formalized through letters patent alone. Although the terminology employed in the texts was Latin, the principal terms used to refer to the parties to the settlement, the possible forms of agreement, and the chosen arbiters and their qualifications had Welsh counterparts, which appear in legal and other kinds of texts. The article examines the correspondence between the Welsh terms degion and gwyrda and their Latin equivalents. It concludes that the perception of the effectiveness of extra-curial modes of conflict resolution was shaped by the social structure of Welsh society in the period under consideration.