Definition
In legal usage, ENLARGE carries three distinct operative meanings, each appearing in different procedural and property contexts:
1. To extend a time limit. The most common procedural use: to grant a party additional time to comply with a court order, file a pleading, or show cause. A court "enlarges" a rule or order when it extends the deadline attached to it. This usage is standard in older practice manuals and appears frequently in historical pleading records.
2. To set at liberty. To release a person from imprisonment or custody, typically upon the giving of bail or the satisfaction of some condition. A prisoner is "enlarged" when discharged from confinement, whether by order of court, satisfaction of judgment, or posting of security.
3. To increase an estate or interest in property. In property law, to enlarge an estate is to expand a tenant's existing interest — for example, converting a life estate or term of years into a fee simple through a release from the holder of the remainder or reversion. This is the operative meaning behind the doctrine of ENLARGER L'ESTATE.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To make something larger; to grow larger; to increase capacity or scope; to speak at length on a subject; to release or set at large.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To make larger in quantity or dimensions; to extend in limits; to increase the capacity of; to expand; to dilate.
The common meaning of "enlarge" — simply to make bigger — only partially overlaps with legal usage. The procedural sense (extending a deadline) and the property sense (expanding an estate interest) are technical applications that a reader would not derive from ordinary usage. Most critically, the liberty sense ("enlarged" meaning released from custody) has largely dropped from modern common speech, making it a genuine trap in historical legal documents where a prisoner described as "enlarged" is not being made physically larger but freed.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
ENLARGE A RULE OR ORDER: Extend the time fixed by a court rule or order for a party to act — to plead, to show cause, or to comply. The standard procedural application.
ENLARGE ON BAIL: Release a person from custody upon the giving of bail or other security. Appears in older criminal and civil imprisonment records.
ENLARGE AN ESTATE (ENLARGER L'ESTATE): A species of release in property law by which the holder of a future interest (remainder or reversion) conveys that interest to the present tenant, thereby merging the interests and expanding — enlarging — the tenant's estate into a fee simple or greater term. A life tenant who receives a release from the remainderman in fee is thereby enlarged to a fee simple owner.
Why It Matters in Research
The three meanings of ENLARGE operate in entirely separate legal domains — procedure, criminal/civil detention, and property conveyancing — and a researcher must identify which context governs before interpreting any historical record. Confusion between meanings is not merely academic: an order "enlarging" a defendant could mean extending a filing deadline or releasing the defendant from custody, and only the surrounding procedural context disambiguates.
In historical corpus research, the liberty sense is the most likely to mislead. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century court records, bail documents, and habeas corpus proceedings use "enlarged" to mean released. This sense has largely disappeared from modern legal writing, so researchers trained on contemporary sources may misread older documents.
The estate sense appears almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century conveyancing literature and real property treatises. It connects directly to the doctrine of ENLARGER L'ESTATE and the broader system of common law releases. Researchers working in colonial land records, early American deed collections, or English equity records should be alert to this usage, which is absent from most modern property law vocabulary.
The procedural sense — enlarging a rule or order — is the most durable, surviving into modern practice through court rules authorizing extensions of time, though the verb "enlarge" itself has been largely displaced by "extend" in contemporary drafting. Historical pleading records, chancery practice manuals, and early American procedure guides use "enlarge" as the standard term.
The Anderson's entry contains a partially corrupted passage mixing a marine insurance definition of "enemies" into the ENLARGE entry — an artifact of the source text. Researchers using historical dictionary compilations should be alert to such interpolations.
Historical Dictionary Support
All five source dictionaries agree on the two primary meanings: (1) to extend time, and (2) to set at liberty. Burrill ties the term explicitly to its French Law root (enlarger) and anchors the procedural sense in English practice, citing Holthouse. Bouvier gives the clearest paired illustration — enlarging a rule to plead, and enlarging a prisoner on bail — making the dual usage easy to distinguish. Black's (both editions) adds the property dimension by flagging ENLARGER L'ESTATE as a related doctrine, though the definition itself does not elaborate on the estate mechanics.
No source dictionary fully develops all three meanings in a unified entry. The estate sense is treated as a separate headword (ENLARGER L'ESTATE) in Black's 2nd edition rather than integrated into the ENLARGE entry, which means researchers consulting only the main entry may miss the property law dimension entirely. Anderson's entry is editorially compromised by the interpolated marine insurance passage and should be used with caution.
Jurisdictional Note
The procedural sense of "enlarge" — extending time — appears across common law jurisdictions but has been largely supplanted by "extend" in modern American federal and state court rules. English practice retained "enlarge" in procedural contexts longer than American usage. The estate sense belongs to common law property systems and does not translate to civil law jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: ENLARGER L'ESTATE (for the property conveyancing doctrine)
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: RULE, PROCEDURAL (for the practice of enlarging rules and orders)