Definition
1. (Historical English law — market offense) The act of buying up large quantities of provisions — particularly corn, grain, or other foodstuffs — with the intent to resell them at an unreasonable price. Engrossing was a common-law misdemeanor in England, punishable by fine and imprisonment. It was understood as a form of market manipulation that hoarded essential goods and drove up prices to the detriment of the public.
2. (Legislative drafting) The formal preparation of a bill or legal instrument in its final, clean form — written or printed in a clear, official hand — for presentation, enrollment, or execution. In legislative practice, an "engrossed bill" is one that has been finalized after all amendments and is ready for its final vote or transmission to the other chamber.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act of one who engrosses, or buys up wholesale.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To purchase the whole of a commodity in the market; also, to absorb wholly; to occupy entirely.
The common word "engross" has survived primarily in the sense of total absorption of attention ("engrossed in a book"), a usage that drifts far from either legal meaning. Researchers working in historical sources should resist reading the modern figurative sense backward into legal contexts. Both legal meanings — market offense and document preparation — are technical and distinct from the colloquial.
Common Confusion
Engrossing is frequently confused with two related common-law market offenses: forestalling and regrating. These three were often charged together and are sometimes loosely interchanged in historical commentary. Forestalling was the interception of goods before they reached the open market; regrating was the resale of goods at the same or a nearby market for profit. Engrossing was the larger-scale accumulation — cornering supply. The distinctions matter in historical legal sources because courts and commentators did not always use the terms precisely.
The document-preparation sense of engrossing is entirely unrelated to the market-offense sense. Confusion arises only in sources that use the word without signaling which meaning is intended.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Market offense sense: Engrossing operated alongside forestalling and regrating as a trio of common-law offenses targeting market manipulation. All three were abolished in England by 7 & 8 Vict. c. 24 (1844).
Legislative/drafting sense: An "engrossed bill" is the version of legislation prepared after passage of amendments and before final vote or transmission. An "enrolled bill" is the version signed into law — engrossment precedes enrollment.
Why It Matters in Research
The dual meaning creates a significant research trap. Pre-1844 English sources discussing engrossing almost certainly mean the market offense. Post-1844 references in American legislative materials almost certainly mean document preparation. Sources that straddle these contexts — treatises on criminal law, early American commercial cases influenced by English common law — may require disambiguation from context.
The market-offense sense largely disappeared from American law before it ever fully took hold, as American jurisdictions did not uniformly adopt the English common-law offenses of engrossing, forestalling, and regrating. Researchers looking for American prosecutions under these headings will find sparse material, and its absence should not be read as an oversight — the offenses simply did not transplant robustly.
For legislative research, the distinction between engrossed and enrolled is procedurally significant. Challenges to legislative authenticity and the enrolled bill doctrine often turn on whether the enrolled bill (not the engrossed bill) is the conclusive record of legislative action. Researchers tracing the history of a statute's passage should understand that the engrossed bill reflects the post-amendment, pre-final version and may differ from what was ultimately enrolled.
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the most useful treatment of the market-offense sense, with reference to Blackstone's Commentaries. The drafting sense receives less treatment in the historical dictionaries and is better developed in legislative procedure manuals and American parliamentary reference sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd Ed.) and Burrill both track closely with Blackstone's formulation — buying up large quantities of provisions with intent to sell at unreasonable prices — and both note the statutory repeal by 7 & 8 Vict. c. 24. There is strong agreement across these sources on the market-offense definition. Bouvier's surviving fragment addresses only the offender (the "engrosser") without a complete independent definition, suggesting reliance on cross-referencing rather than independent treatment.
None of the historical dictionaries in this corpus give substantial treatment to the document-preparation sense of engrossing. That meaning is more fully developed in American legislative drafting manuals and procedural texts outside the standard law dictionary tradition. Researchers should treat the historical dictionaries as authoritative for the market-offense meaning and supplement elsewhere for the drafting meaning.
The repeal date — 1844 — is a clean terminus for the market-offense sense in English law, and it provides a useful chronological anchor when evaluating whether a source is treating the term as live law or historical reference.
Jurisdictional Note
In American jurisdictions, the market-offense meaning of engrossing was never uniformly codified and has no modern legal force. The document-preparation meaning remains active in American legislative practice, where "engrossed bill" is a standard procedural term used by Congress and most state legislatures, though procedural rules governing engrossment vary by chamber and state.