Definition
In legal drafting and pleading, "being" functions as a participial modifier that attributes a status, condition, or characteristic to a named person or thing at the time relevant to the allegation. It does not name an independent concept but performs a precise descriptive role: connecting a noun to a qualifying fact that bears legal significance. In the example that anchors historical usage, an indictment or complaint alleging that liquor was sold to S. and W. M., "being" minors, was held sufficient to plead minority with the requisite certainty. The word carries the legal weight of "at that time having the status of."
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "be."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Existing.
The gap between ordinary and legal usage is narrow but consequential. In common speech, "being" is a grammatical particle that contributes almost nothing beyond verb form. In pleading, it functions as a term of art that anchors a status allegation to a specific moment and person, and courts have treated its presence as legally operative language capable of satisfying sufficiency requirements for capacity-based claims.
Common Confusion
"Being" in pleading contexts is sometimes confused with surplusage — language that courts disregard as unnecessary. The distinction matters: where "being" introduces a status (minority, incompetency, disability) that is an element of the offense or claim, it is not surplusage. Its presence can determine whether an indictment or complaint survives a motion to dismiss for insufficient particularity. Conversely, where the status introduced by "being" is legally irrelevant to any element, courts may treat it as descriptive filler. Researchers should not assume the word is always operative or always inert — context governs.
Why It Matters in Research
The practical research value of this entry is narrow and specific. "Being" appears in historical pleading, indictment, and charging documents as the hinge word that introduces status allegations. Researchers analyzing the sufficiency of historical indictments — particularly those involving age (minority), marital status, or disability — should note whether the status is introduced by "being" and whether courts treated that construction as adequate averment.
In older corpus materials, pleading rules were strict. A status that needed to be alleged — such as minority in a sale-of-liquor prosecution — had to appear clearly enough that the accused could prepare a defense and the court could assess jurisdiction or applicable law. The word "being" was one recognized way to accomplish that. Modern pleading rules are more permissive, so the significance of this construction fades in contemporary documents but remains important when reading historical charging instruments, statutory offenses with capacity elements, and early treatise discussions of pleading sufficiency.
Researchers should also be alert to "being" constructions in deed and conveyancing language, where the word similarly performs a status-anchoring function (e.g., "A., being seized in fee"). That context is related but distinct from the pleading context emphasized in historical legal dictionary sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry. Anderson's treatment is brief and illustrative rather than doctrinal: it points to a concrete pleading example — sale of liquor to persons described as "being" minors — and confirms that such phrasing satisfies a sufficiency standard. Anderson cross-references "IN" and "Esse," signaling that the concept connects to questions of existence and present condition in legal Latin usage.
No other shelf source addresses "being" as a discrete legal term, which itself is instructive. The word functions below the threshold of most doctrinal treatments; it is a term of craft rather than a term of doctrine. Researchers who encounter it should look not to legal definitions but to the pleading rules and sufficiency standards of the jurisdiction and period in question.