Definition
To consign is to deliver goods, property, or things to another person — typically a factor, agent, or carrier — for a specific purpose such as sale, storage, transport, or safekeeping. The consigning party (the consignor) retains an ownership interest while the receiving party (the consignee) takes custody and acts under defined authority.
The term carries two distinct legal meanings depending on context:
1. COMMERCIAL/MERCANTILE LAW: To send or deliver goods to a merchant, factor, commission agent, or carrier for purposes of sale, shipment, or storage. The consignor does not transfer title; instead, the consignee receives the goods under a relationship of trust or agency, often earning a commission on sale. This is the predominant modern usage.
2. CIVIL LAW: To deposit, under court authority, a thing owed by a debtor into the custody of a third person for the benefit of a creditor. This formal judicial deposit — called consignation — operates as a mechanism of payment or tender when a creditor refuses to accept performance. The civil law meaning is functionally closer to a judicial deposit or tender into court than to a commercial delivery.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To transfer to the custody of another, usually for sale, transport, or safekeeping; to entrust to another's care; to send to a final destination; to assign or devote to a particular state or end.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To give, transfer, or deliver in a formal manner as if signing over into the possession of another, with a sense of fixedness in that state or permanence of possession — as in consigning a body to the grave or consigning a person to a particular fate.
The gap matters in two directions. In ordinary English, "consign" often carries a sense of finality or even dismissal — one consigns something to oblivion, to history, or to the grave. In commercial law, consignment carries no such permanence: ownership remains with the consignor until sale. A researcher encountering the word in non-legal historical texts should not assume the legal relationship of consignment is present just because the word appears.
---
Common Confusion
CONSIGN vs. SELL: Consigning goods does not transfer title. The consignor remains the owner until the consignee completes a sale to a third party. This distinction is commercially significant — goods held on consignment may be reclaimed by the consignor and are treated differently in insolvency proceedings than goods that have been sold outright.
CONSIGN (commercial) vs. CONSIGN (civil law): The two legal meanings are operationally unrelated. The mercantile usage describes a voluntary commercial arrangement between a principal and agent. The civil law usage describes a judicially supervised deposit as a form of forced or substitute tender. Historical sources sometimes treat these definitions side by side without clearly flagging the divide, which can mislead researchers working across common law and civil law traditions.
---
Why It Matters in Research
The dual definition problem is a genuine research trap. Pre-20th-century legal sources, particularly those influenced by civilian jurisprudence, routinely discuss consign and consignation together. Researchers using the Law Mind corpus who encounter "consign" in equity or Louisiana materials, Scottish law sources, or texts citing Pothier should immediately consider whether the civil law meaning — judicial deposit — is intended rather than the commercial agency meaning.
In commercial law materials, consignment arrangements generate a cluster of related doctrinal issues: the consignee's authority to sell, risk of loss during transit, priority disputes with the consignee's creditors, and the treatment of consigned goods under UCC Article 9 (in modern American sources). Historical corpus materials will not reflect UCC framing, but the underlying structural questions — who bears risk, who has title, what authority does the factor hold — appear consistently across periods.
For corpus navigation: documents using "consign" in a commercial context will likely connect to materials on factors, commission merchants, bills of lading, and freight. Documents using the civil law meaning will connect to tender, payment, consignation, and judicial deposit doctrine. The presence of Pothier citations is a reliable signal that the civil law meaning is operative.
The word "consignation" — the noun form of the civil law meaning — is not identical to "consignment," the noun form of the commercial meaning. Researchers should treat these as distinct index terms and not assume that results for one will capture the other.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the two-definition structure without disagreement. Black's, Bouvier's, Anderson's, and Rapalje & Lawrence all present the civil law meaning (judicially supervised deposit for the benefit of a creditor) alongside the commercial meaning (delivery to a factor for sale), with all four citing or paraphrasing Pothier's Obligations as the authority for the civil law definition. This unusual consistency across dictionaries reflects direct borrowing from a common civilian source rather than independent doctrinal development.
Burrill adds a useful observation: the radical meaning of the word, even in mercantile use, is to deliver or transfer as a charge or trust — a point confirmed by Webster's 1913. This underlying sense of trust or charge distinguishes consignment from outright sale even at the word's root, and Burrill's note is the clearest articulation of why the word carries ongoing ownership implications.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the treatment of consigned goods in the context of the consignee's insolvency — a question that becomes practically important in commercial practice and that modern law (UCC Article 9) resolves explicitly. Researchers working on 19th-century mercantile disputes involving factors who became insolvent will find the historical dictionaries silent on priority and must look to case law and equity materials directly.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The civil law meaning of consign — as judicial deposit under court authority — remains operative in Louisiana, Quebec, and other mixed or civilian jurisdictions. Researchers working in common law jurisdictions will rarely encounter this usage except in historical materials or treatises with civilian influence. In modern U.S. commercial practice, consignment is governed principally by UCC Article 9 when the consignee's creditors are involved, a framework absent from all pre-UCC sources.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Consignment (primary); Bailment (for custody and possession distinctions); Factor and Commission Merchant (for the agency relationship in commercial consignments); Tender and Payment (for the civil law consignation doctrine).
---