Definition
A unit of dry measure traditionally containing four pecks, eight gallons, or thirty-two quarts. In legal contexts, the bushel appears primarily in contracts, statutes, and commercial instruments governing the sale or taxation of grain, produce, and other dry commodities. Its legal significance lies less in its abstract definition than in its variability: the precise capacity and the weight equivalent of a bushel differ across jurisdictions by virtue of statutory enactment, making the term legally imprecise without reference to the governing law of the transaction or forum.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A dry measure of approximately 0.0364 cubic meters (imperial) or 0.0352 cubic meters (U.S.); also a vessel of that capacity; colloquially, a large indefinite quantity.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A dry measure of four pecks, eight gallons, or thirty-two quarts; the vessel used to measure it; and, colloquially, a large indefinite amount. Webster's also records the biblical idiom of hiding a candle under a bushel.
The gap between common and legal meaning is not definitional but practical. In ordinary speech a bushel is treated as a fixed, understood quantity. In legal instruments — particularly contracts for the sale of grain — courts and parties must determine which bushel was intended: the Winchester standard, the imperial standard, or a state-statutory variant. The colloquial sense of "a bushel" as simply "a lot" has no legal operative effect and should not be imported into the interpretation of commercial documents.
Why It Matters in Research
The central research trap is assuming uniformity. When a researcher encounters "bushel" in a historical contract, statute, deed, or customs document, the term cannot be treated as self-defining. Several distinct standards have coexisted:
The Winchester bushel (established by 13 Will. III, c. 5, 1701) was the English standard for grain and the baseline measure carried into early American practice. It was defined as a cylindrical vessel 18.5 inches in diameter and 8 inches deep, with a capacity of 2,145.42 cubic inches. This is the measure most likely to appear in colonial-era and early federal American legal materials.
The imperial bushel (5 & 6 Geo. IV, c. 74) replaced the Winchester bushel in England after 1824, expanding capacity to 2,218.192 cubic inches. Researchers working with post-1824 English sources or materials influenced by English commercial practice after that date must account for this shift.
American state statutes further complicated matters by prescribing their own bushel capacities and, critically, statutory weight equivalents for specific commodities — a bushel of wheat, corn, oats, or potatoes could be legally defined by weight rather than volume, and those weights varied by state. The Second Edition of Black's cites Richardson v. Spafford, 13 Vt., as an example of litigation arising from exactly this ambiguity.
For corpus researchers in Law Mind, this means that "bushel" in an 1840 Vermont contract, an 1860 Illinois grain statute, and a 1700 English customs record are not interchangeable. When reading commodity sale disputes, taxation records, or agricultural regulations, always identify the jurisdiction and date before assuming any particular measure. The term also appears in early weights-and-measures legislation, which is a natural corpus connection for researchers tracing the standardization of commercial measurement.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in agreement on the baseline definition — four pecks, eight gallons, thirty-two quarts — but diverge in how deeply they engage with the variability problem.
Black's (both editions) states the definition and then immediately flags the jurisdictional instability caused by state statutory enactments, treating this as the term's primary legal significance. This is the correct emphasis for a law dictionary.
Bouvier goes furthest in technical specificity, providing the actual cubic-inch capacities of both the Winchester and the imperial bushel and noting the American adoption of the Winchester standard in many states. Bouvier's entry is the most useful for a researcher who needs to reconstruct the actual measure contemplated in a historical document.
Burrill notes the Winchester bushel as the English standard "from the time of Henry" (the entry appears truncated in the available source) and supplies the Latin and Law French roots of the word — bussel, busellus, bussellus — which is characteristic of Burrill's philological approach. The etymological information is of limited legal utility but may assist in reading medieval or early modern Latin legal texts where the term appears in its Latinized form.
None of the historical dictionaries provide a comprehensive treatment of American state-by-state variation, which is precisely where the most litigation arose. Researchers needing that detail must turn to the statutes themselves or to commodity-specific case law.
Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, no uniform federal definition of the bushel governs private contracts; the operative standard is determined by state statute or, in the absence of statute, by trade custom and the intent of the parties. Many states defined the bushel by commodity weight rather than volume for purposes of sale, making the term effectively commodity-specific within those jurisdictions.