Definition
The bargainee is the party in a bargain and sale transaction who receives, or is to receive, the property conveyed. In the context of a deed of bargain and sale, the bargainee is functionally equivalent to the grantee — the person to whom title passes from the bargainor in exchange for a consideration. The term is relational: it has no meaning except in reference to a bargainor on the other side of the transaction.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The party to a contract who receives, or agrees to receive, the property being sold."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The party to a contract who receives, or agrees to receive, the property sold."
The common and legal meanings are close but not identical. In ordinary usage, "bargainee" can describe any buyer in any transaction. In legal usage, the term is almost exclusively tied to the technical form of conveyance known as the deed of bargain and sale — a specific instrument with historical roots in the Statute of Uses (1535). A researcher encountering "bargainee" in a historical deed is not reading a synonym for purchaser in the modern commercial sense; they are reading the formal designation of the grantee in a particular mode of conveyance that operates through the raising of a use.
Common Confusion
Bargainee and grantee are often used interchangeably in historical sources, but they are not identical concepts. "Grantee" is the broader term, applicable to any transfer by deed. "Bargainee" is specific to bargain and sale conveyances. In practice, early American and English deeds frequently used both terms together ("grant, bargain, and sell") precisely to cover multiple conveyancing theories simultaneously, which can make it appear that the terms are synonyms when they are technically distinct instruments of the same transaction. A researcher should not assume that the absence of "bargainee" in a deed means no bargain and sale occurred, or that its presence signals only a bargain and sale and not also a grant.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a minor but structurally specific term whose research value is almost entirely historical. Modern conveyancing has largely abandoned the deed of bargain and sale as a formal category, folding its functions into the general warranty deed or statutory deed forms. When the term appears in historical materials — colonial-era land records, 18th and early 19th century American deeds, or English common law sources — it signals a specific conveyancing form with distinct legal mechanics, particularly its operation under the Statute of Uses.
Researchers working in pre-Civil War American property records should be alert to the full formulaic phrase: "bargain, sell, and convey" or "grant, bargain, and sell." These strings were used to ensure that multiple theories of title transfer were invoked simultaneously, protecting against technical failures in any single mode. Finding "bargainee" in a deed does not tell you which theory succeeded — it tells you which theory was attempted.
The term also matters for chain-of-title research in jurisdictions with strong recording act histories. Because bargain and sale deeds could, under the Statute of Uses, convey title without livery of seisin (the traditional physical delivery of possession), disputes arose over whether recording statutes applied to them in the same way they applied to other conveyances. Historical cases and treatises in states with early equity traditions may use "bargainee" as a term of art in ways that affect how title passed and when recording triggered constructive notice.
No significant jurisdictional variation exists in the meaning of the term itself. Variation exists instead in how different states' courts treated the underlying bargain and sale form.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in full agreement: the bargainee is the grantee in a deed of bargain and sale. Neither source adds substantial nuance beyond this functional equivalence. Bouvier's formulation — "the person to whom property is tendered in a bargain" — is slightly broader, encompassing the moment of offer before transfer is complete, but in practice the distinction is inconsequential in the sources.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the doctrinal significance of why the bargain and sale form existed and why the bargainee's position differed from an ordinary grantee in an estate of feoffment. The bargain and sale operated by raising a use in favor of the bargainee upon payment of consideration; the Statute of Uses then executed that use, vesting legal title without the formality of livery of seisin. This mechanism is what made the term technically precise rather than merely descriptive, and it is largely invisible in the dictionary entries. Researchers needing that doctrinal background should move to treatise sources — Blackstone's Commentaries and early American property treatises — rather than relying on the dictionary entries alone.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Bargain and Sale (for the conveyancing form and its historical operation); Conveyancing (for the broader framework of deed forms and their distinct legal effects); Statute of Uses (for the statutory mechanism that gave the bargain and sale its operative force).