Definition
An archaic variant spelling of CRIER. In legal usage, a cryer is one who calls out aloud, publishes, or proclaims — most commonly applied in two senses: (1) a court official who makes public announcements in a judicial proceeding, and (2) an auctioneer who publicly calls out bids and terms of sale.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A surname originating as an occupational name for a town crier.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The female of a hawk; a falcon-gentil.
The gap here is complete. Webster's 1913 records an entirely different word — a falconry term for the female hawk — that happens to share the same spelling. The legal term "cryer" has no connection to falconry. Researchers encountering "cryer" in historical legal documents should not be misled by Webster's definition; the legal meaning is strictly the variant spelling of "crier," meaning a public proclaimer or auctioneer.
Common Confusion
CRYER and CRIER are variant spellings of the same term. Historical legal sources use both interchangeably, with "crier" being the dominant modern form. Researchers should search under both spellings when working with older records, pleadings, or court documents. Bouvier's Law Dictionary cross-references directly to CRIER without providing an independent definition, confirming that the two forms were treated as equivalent.
Why It Matters in Research
The spelling "cryer" appears in older Virginia and early American case law and legal texts where it was used both for auctioneers and for court officers. The case cited in Black's — Carr v. Gooch, 1 Wash. (Va.) 337 — uses "cryer" in the auctioneer sense, placing the term in early Virginia common law on commercial transactions and agency. Researchers working in pre-Civil War American legal sources, particularly those from Virginia and the mid-Atlantic states, should expect this spelling.
The dual meaning — court officer versus auctioneer — carries research consequences. When "cryer" appears in court records, it may refer to the court's own officer (responsible for opening court, maintaining order, and making announcements) or to a commercial auctioneer acting on behalf of a principal. Context will usually resolve which sense is intended, but researchers conflating the two roles may misread the legal relationships at issue, particularly in agency and contract disputes arising out of auction sales.
Because this term is almost exclusively encountered in historical sources, it rarely appears in modern legal databases under this spelling. Full-text searching of digitized historical records, deed books, and early reporters will be more productive than searching modern legal databases.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries point in the same direction. Black's Law Dictionary (both the original and second edition) define "cryer" identically: an auctioneer, and one who calls out aloud or proclaims, with a cross-reference to CRIER. Bouvier's dispenses with an independent definition entirely and simply directs the reader to CRIER. There is no divergence among the sources on meaning, only on how much detail to provide.
Black's second edition reproduces the same Virginia case reference as the first, suggesting the definition was carried forward without significant revision — a sign that the term had stabilized early and was not generating new legal development by the time of the second edition. None of the historical dictionaries address the falconry homonym, which is appropriately irrelevant to legal usage.
Jurisdictional Note
The documented legal use of "cryer" in the auctioneer sense is concentrated in early Virginia case law. The court officer sense of the term was common across American and English jurisdictions but is largely found under the spelling "crier" in sources outside Virginia.