Definition
In law, a disguise is anything worn upon or applied to the person with the intent to alter the wearer's appearance so that they will not be recognized by those who know them, or will be mistaken for someone else. The term focuses on physical concealment of identity through dress, makeup, costume, or similar external means.
Disguise operates as a legally significant concept in two primary contexts:
1. Criminal statutes. Many statutes treat the use of a disguise as an aggravating circumstance, a separate offense element, or a standalone crime. Mask-and-disguise statutes — historically enacted to suppress political violence and mob activity — often impose liability on counties, localities, or individuals where disguised persons commit murder or assault. The presence of a disguise may also aggravate sentencing under modern criminal codes.
2. Evidentiary and identity contexts. Evidence that a person wore a disguise during the commission of a crime is generally admissible as circumstantial evidence of consciousness of guilt — the inference being that one who conceals their identity anticipates wrongdoing.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To change the appearance of a person or thing so as to hide identity or assume another; also, to conceal something secret by false appearance.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To change the guise or appearance of; especially to conceal by an unusual dress intended to mislead or deceive; also, to hide by a counterfeit appearance or mask.
The common meaning of disguise is broad — it encompasses concealing emotions, hiding intentions, or misrepresenting facts metaphorically. The legal meaning is narrower and more concrete: it requires something physically worn or applied to the body with intent to defeat recognition. A person who lies about their name but wears no altered dress is not in disguise in the legal sense. The metaphorical uses familiar from ordinary speech — disguising one's motives, disguising a document's purpose — carry no legal weight under disguise statutes.
---
Common Confusion
The critical interpretive question across historical sources is whether concealment of the body or position (hiding behind bushes, lying in ambush) constitutes disguise. The answer, consistently, is no. Disguise requires something worn or applied to the person — it is about altered appearance, not physical hiding. A person concealed in darkness or behind cover has not disguised themselves within the meaning of most statutes. Researchers must not conflate disguise with concealment generally. The two may overlap in practice (a disguised person may also hide) but they are distinct legal concepts.
---
Why It Matters in Research
The statutory context is everything. Disguise appears most frequently in older American criminal codes governing masked assemblies and politically motivated violence — statutes with roots in post-Reconstruction anti-Klan legislation and earlier English Black Acts. When researching these statutes in historical sources, the county-liability provisions (imposing civil damages on counties where disguised mobs commit murder) are particularly significant and frequently referenced in nineteenth-century case reporters. The Alabama authorities cited in both Bouvier's and Anderson's point to this specific line of cases.
Researchers working in modern criminal law should be aware that disguise statutes have been substantially updated, supplemented by identity-concealment provisions, and in some jurisdictions folded into broader anti-mask laws or hate crime enhancement schemes. The older dictionary definitions track the common law and early statutory period well but do not reflect modern federal sentencing enhancements or state hate crime statutes that treat disguise as an aggravating factor.
There is also an important First Amendment dimension in modern law that historical sources do not address at all. Anti-mask and disguise statutes have been challenged as unconstitutional restrictions on anonymous expression and political association. Historical dictionaries are silent on this entirely — the constitutional overlay is a twentieth and twenty-first century development that researchers must source through case law, not these reference works.
For corpus researchers: disguise will appear in historical sources in close proximity to terms like riot, mob, assembly, murder, county liability, and mask. In modern sources, look also for connections to identity fraud, facial concealment, and consciousness of guilt doctrine.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) offers identical treatment, defining disguise as a "counterfeit habit" — a dress intended to conceal the wearer — and expanding to cover anything worn to prevent recognition or enable mistaken identity. This is a careful, workable definition that holds up well. Both editions borrow from Webster for the initial framing, then add legal specificity.
Bouvier's and Anderson's each flag the same interpretive limit: physical hiding (ambush, concealment behind bushes) does not constitute disguise under the statutes. Both cite to the same Alabama authority at 46 Ala. 118, suggesting this case was the leading reference point for the proposition in the period these dictionaries were compiled.
The historical sources agree on the core definition and agree on the exclusion of mere physical concealment. Where they fall short is in scope: none addresses disguise in the evidentiary context (consciousness of guilt), none engages with the constitutional questions that anti-mask statutes now routinely generate, and none reflects the modern aggravated-offense frameworks in which disguise appears as a sentencing factor.
---
Jurisdictional Note
State law varies considerably in how disguise is codified and what it aggravates. Some states retain standalone anti-mask statutes with deep historical roots; others have repealed or narrowed them following constitutional challenges. Federal sentencing guidelines may treat the use of a disguise as an obstruction-related enhancement. Researchers should not assume that historical common law definitions map cleanly onto any particular modern jurisdiction's statutory scheme.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See: Law Mind Encyclopedia — Masks and Disguise in Criminal Law
See also: Law Mind Encyclopedia — Consciousness of Guilt (Evidentiary Doctrine); County Liability for Mob Violence (Historical Statutes)
---