Definition
A term of limitation and completeness in legal drafting, meaning "being composed entirely of" or "made up of." When a list, category, or set is defined as consisting of specified items, those items are understood to be exhaustive — the full and complete contents of the set, nothing more.
The operative legal weight of the word lies in its exclusivity: a phrase structured as "consisting of A, B, and C" is read to contain only A, B, and C. No implied members, no residual category.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of consist — general, context-neutral usage meaning "being made up of" or "comprising."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To be composed or made up; to have as components — again, descriptively neutral.
Editorial note: In ordinary English, "consisting of" and "including" can feel interchangeable. In legal usage, they are not. "Consisting of" closes the list; "including" opens it. A researcher or drafter who treats these words as stylistic variants will misread the scope of virtually any provision where the distinction is operative.
Common Confusion
CONSISTING OF vs. INCLUDING: This is the core distinction the historical dictionaries emphasize and the one most likely to cause interpretive error. "Including" signals that the items named are illustrative or partial — other members of the category may exist. "Consisting of" signals that the items named are the whole — the list is exhaustive and no unlisted members qualify. Courts have treated this distinction as outcome-determinative in contract interpretation, statutory construction, and deed description. The two terms should never be used interchangeably in drafting, and a researcher reading older instruments should not assume the drafting was careful on this point.
Why It Matters in Research
This term functions as a structural signal in legal instruments, and its presence or absence in a key clause can determine the scope of a right, obligation, or category. Several research traps follow from this:
First, in historical documents — particularly 19th-century deeds, contracts, and statutes — drafting conventions were less standardized. A researcher cannot assume that "consisting of" was used with its limiting legal meaning every time it appears; the surrounding context and applicable interpretive rules of the jurisdiction matter.
Second, the distinction between "consisting of" and "including" became a recurring issue in statutory construction. Courts and treatises developed clear doctrine on it, but the clarity of that doctrine is only as good as the precision of the original drafting. When analyzing a statute or contract in the corpus, flag the precise word used before concluding whether a list is exhaustive or illustrative.
Third, the term rarely appears in isolation as a standalone legal concept — it is a drafting word, not a cause of action or legal status. Research on "consisting" is almost always subordinate to a question about the instrument in which it appears: What does this category include? Is this list closed or open? The dictionary entry answers the threshold question; the instrument answers the rest.
Fourth, Anderson's entry trails off into a citation to consignare that appears to be a printing artifact from an adjacent entry in the original source. Researchers using digitized historical dictionaries should watch for similar bleed-through between adjacent entries, particularly in older compiled volumes.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries converge completely: "consisting of" means composed entirely of, and the word is not synonymous with "including." Both editions of Black's cite Missouri appellate authority for the proposition (Farish v. Cook, cited in the 2nd edition). Anderson's cites Allen v. Kennedy (Mo. 1886) in the same vein, with an additional pointer toward Jones v. N.Y. Guaranty Co. (U.S. 1879) in the context of the broader including/consisting distinction.
The sources do not diverge on substance. What they do not address is the interpretive question of which word controls when a drafter uses both in the same instrument, or when "consisting" is used in a statute with an express non-exhaustive recital elsewhere. Those questions are left to the cases and treatises the dictionaries cite rather than resolve.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia, civpro_182: Prior Statements of Witnesses — Rule 801(d)(1) (Inconsistent, Consistent, Identification). This entry is relevant only if the researcher's interest in "consisting" arises in the context of parsing what a prior consistent or inconsistent statement "consists of" for evidentiary purposes — a peripheral connection at best. For most research questions about this term, the encyclopedia cross-reference is not the primary resource; the instrument or statute under study is.