Definition
ENGROSS has two distinct legal meanings that arise in different contexts and should not be confused with each other.
1. Documentary drafting. To engross an instrument is to produce the final, clean, authoritative copy of a legal document — historically written by hand in a large, clear script on parchment — suitable for execution or official use. The engrossed copy is the document that parties sign or that is filed as the official record. This meaning survives in modern legislative practice, where a bill "ordered to be engrossed" has been approved through deliberation and is formally prepared in final form before enactment.
2. Economic offense. At common law, engrossing was the crime of buying up a commodity in such quantities as to gain control of the market supply, enabling the offender to resell at an artificially inflated price. It was a recognized economic offense alongside forestalling (intercepting goods before they reached market) and regrating (buying and reselling in the same market at a higher price).
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To engross means to completely absorb or occupy someone's attention ("the book engrossed her for hours"), or to write a document in large legible lettering, or to buy up wholesale.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To copy or write in a large hand; also, to amass or accumulate; to make gross or thick.
Editorial note: The everyday sense — "to engross" as meaning to absorb one's attention — has no legal counterpart and is irrelevant to legal research. The economic sense (to buy up wholesale or monopolize) is the archaic legal offense, not the modern commercial meaning of bulk purchasing. Researchers encountering "engrossed" in documentary contexts should not import either common meaning.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
ENGROSSED BILL: In legislative procedure, a bill that has passed through debate and amendment and has been formally prepared in final written form for the vote on passage or for transmission to the other chamber. Distinct from an enrolled bill, which is the version authenticated after passage by both chambers and presented for executive approval.
ENGROSSING (CRIMINAL OFFENSE): The common law economic crime. By the nineteenth century, engrossing as a criminal offense had largely fallen out of enforcement in both England and the United States, displaced by statutory approaches to monopoly and market manipulation.
Why It Matters in Research
The documentary and criminal meanings operate in entirely separate research contexts, but older sources will treat them under a single entry without signaling the shift. A researcher working with legislative records will encounter "engrossed" as a routine procedural term — it signals where a bill sits in the legislative sequence, between amendment and enrollment. Missing the distinction between an engrossed bill and an enrolled bill is a common error that can lead to misidentifying which version of a statute is controlling.
The criminal meaning is historically significant but largely obsolete as a standalone offense. Researchers working in early American economic regulation, colonial law, or English common law will encounter it frequently. After the late eighteenth century, engrossing as a crime was gradually absorbed into broader monopoly and restraint-of-trade doctrine. Do not expect modern criminal law sources to treat it as a live offense.
Corpus users should also note that "engross" in older manuscript or chancery documents almost always signals the documentary meaning — a reference to the physical act of producing a fair copy. The handwriting practice itself carries evidentiary significance: an engrossed copy was presumed authoritative, and disputes about whether a document had been properly engrossed could affect its legal effect.
Jurisdictional variation in legislative usage matters: some state legislatures use "engrossed" and "enrolled" interchangeably in colloquial usage, though the formal distinction remains operative in most parliamentary procedure rules.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Black's 2nd give compact, parallel treatments: engross means to copy a draft instrument in a fair large hand, and separately, to buy up a commodity for monopoly resale. Neither edition elaborates on the legislative dimension.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law is the most useful of the shelf sources here. It explicitly connects the documentary meaning to legislative procedure — "a bill ordered to be engrossed is to be written in a strong gross hand" — and flags the common law offense of engrossing as a distinct entry, directing the reader to GROSS for etymology. This is the only shelf source that makes the parliamentary application clear.
Burrill's entry is fragmentary in the available text, offering only the etymology (French en gros, meaning "in large") without substantive development.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: none adequately explains the distinction between an engrossed bill and an enrolled bill, which is the distinction most likely to matter in legislative history research. They also do not address the decline of the criminal offense or its absorption into later monopoly doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
The legislative meaning of "engrossed bill" is standard in American state and federal parliamentary procedure, but terminology is not uniform across all state legislatures. Some chambers use "enrolled" to cover what others call "engrossed." Researchers should consult the specific chamber's rules or glossary when working with legislative history from an unfamiliar jurisdiction.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Legislative Process (for engrossed vs. enrolled bill distinction and bill progression)
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Forestalling, Regrating, and Engrossing (for the common law economic offenses)