Definition
In legal usage, to beg means to solicit alms or charitable aid from others, typically in a public place. The term appears most frequently in the context of vagrancy and public-order statutes that criminalize or regulate begging. The physical act of solicitation need not involve words: a person who silently holds out a hand and receives money from passersby engages in begging within the meaning of statutes that prohibit the practice.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To request the help of someone, often in the form of money; to plead or entreat for a favor; also used in the phrases "beg the question" (to assume a conclusion, or to raise a question) and "beg to be appointed guardian."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A title of honor in Turkey and parts of the East; a bey. (Note: Webster's 1913 records only the homonym "beg" as an honorific title, not the solicitation meaning — a reminder that historical general dictionaries are not reliable guides to contemporaneous legal usage of the same word-form.)
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow for the solicitation sense but worth noting: ordinary usage treats begging as inherently verbal or at least expressive, while legal usage — as illustrated in the historical dictionaries — extends the term to silent, passive conduct such as holding out a hand. This expansion has constitutional significance in modern First Amendment doctrine, where the expressive character of begging bears directly on whether anti-begging ordinances survive scrutiny.
Why It Matters in Research
The legal treatment of begging has shifted dramatically since the era of the Black's definitions. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources address begging primarily as a component of vagrancy law — a regulatory matter carrying criminal penalties with little constitutional analysis. Modern research in this area requires moving well beyond the historical dictionaries into First Amendment case law, where courts have divided on whether solicitation of charity is protected speech, and into municipal ordinances that vary widely in how they define and restrict the conduct.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should be alert to three navigational issues. First, terms cluster: begging entries in historical sources sit adjacent to or within vagrancy, mendicancy, and alms entries, and those adjacent entries often contain more substantive legal analysis than the begging entry itself. Second, the silent-conduct holding illustrated in In re Haller remains a useful doctrinal data point for modern debates about whether non-verbal solicitation counts as speech — it shows courts were already treating passive physical conduct as legally equivalent to active verbal solicitation more than a century ago. Third, anti-begging statutes in the corpus will sometimes use the phrase "begging for alms" and sometimes use "solicitation" or "panhandling" as functional synonyms; a complete search requires all three terms.
Historical Dictionary Support
The two Black's editions are substantively identical on this entry, with the second edition adding the full citation to In re Haller. Both editions define begging by its function — soliciting alms or charitable aid — and both use the same illustrative example of the silent cripple to establish that the term reaches non-verbal conduct. The second edition's addition of the citation is useful for corpus researchers because it grounds the definition in a specific judicial construction rather than leaving it as an abstract proposition.
Neither edition engages with the constitutional dimensions of begging regulation, which is unsurprising given their publication dates. Neither edition addresses the distinction between begging and related conduct such as street performance, vending, or religious solicitation — distinctions that became legally significant in the latter half of the twentieth century. Researchers should treat these entries as establishing baseline historical meaning only and supplement them with modern sources for any live legal question.
Jurisdictional Note
Anti-begging ordinances vary substantially by jurisdiction. Some municipalities regulate only aggressive solicitation; others broadly prohibit solicitation in specified public areas. Federal circuit courts have split on First Amendment protection for charitable solicitation in public spaces, making jurisdiction-specific research essential for any modern application.