Definition
A forger is a person who commits the crime of forgery: the fraudulent making, altering, or uttering of a false document or instrument with intent to deceive or defraud. The term is essentially the actor-noun form of the offense of forgery, identifying the individual who performs the act rather than describing the act itself.
In legal usage, the word carries its full criminal-law weight: a forger is not merely someone who copies or imitates, but someone who does so with the specific intent required for forgery as a crime — typically the intent to defraud another party through the false instrument. The forger may be the person who physically creates or alters the document, or in some formulations, the person who utters (presents or passes) a document known to be forged.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A person who creates forgeries, falsifies documents with intent to defraud, e.g. to create a false will or illicit copies of currency; counterfeiter. Also: a person who forges metals.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who forges, makes, or forms; a fabricator; a falsifier. Especially: one guilty of forgery; one who makes or issues a counterfeit document.
The legal and common meanings are unusually well aligned here, with one practical gap worth noting. Common usage freely extends "forger" to the metalworking sense — a craftsman who shapes metal by heating and hammering — while legal usage is confined exclusively to the fraudulent-document sense. Researchers consulting historical dictionaries or general reference sources should confirm context before assuming a legal meaning is intended.
Common Confusion
FORGER vs. COUNTERFEITER: Though sometimes used interchangeably in ordinary speech, these terms have distinct legal significance. A forger typically falsifies a specific document — a deed, will, signature, or negotiable instrument — by making or altering it. A counterfeiter more precisely refers to one who reproduces or imitates currency, official seals, or standardized instruments at scale. The distinction matters in historical sources, where separate writs and distinct criminal proceedings attached to each category. Some statutes treat the two as overlapping; others maintain the separation.
FORGER vs. UTTERER: A forger creates or alters the false instrument. An utterer passes or presents it, knowing it to be false. These may be the same person or different actors in the same scheme. Historical legal sources frequently treat uttering as a distinct offense from forgery itself, and researchers should not assume that identifying a forger in a record resolves the question of who uttered the instrument.
Why It Matters in Research
FORGER is an actor-designation, not an offense-name, and this distinction shapes how it appears across the corpus. In case reporters and indictments, researchers are more likely to encounter "forgery" as the charged offense; "forger" appears in judicial opinions, treatises, and commentaries when courts characterize the defendant's role or describe the nature of the offense.
In historical English and early American materials, the term surfaces in Year Book citations and early writ practice in its Law French form — forger — meaning to frame, contrive, or fabricate. Burrill records the writ "brief de forger de faux faits" (writ for forging false deeds), which signals that early usage was verb-based and craft-oriented: the forger was literally the fabricator of false instruments. Researchers working with pre-nineteenth-century materials should expect this verbal, constructive sense rather than a narrowly criminal one.
Jurisdictional variation in what constitutes forgery directly affects how broadly or narrowly "forger" operates as a legal category in a given source. Some historical jurisdictions required that the forged instrument be one capable of legal effect; others extended the offense more broadly. A person labeled a "forger" in one jurisdiction's records may not meet the formal elements required in another.
Corpus researchers should also note that FORGER occasionally appears in equity proceedings and civil fraud cases, not only criminal records, when courts characterize a party's conduct in language borrowed from criminal law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary roots the term firmly in Law French usage, glossing the verb "forger" as to frame, fashion, contrive, fabricate, or forge, and citing Year Book authority from the reign of Henry VI. The entry records the compound phrase "brief de forger de faux faits" — a writ for forging false deeds — which illustrates that the forge concept in medieval English law attached primarily to deeds and instruments of title, not to currency or seals.
Burrill's treatment is narrow by modern standards: it enters the term through the verb and writ-practice angle, with no extended analysis of the criminal elements. This is consistent with the dictionary's general approach to criminal actors, which tends toward definitional brevity rather than doctrinal elaboration.
Webster's 1913 is notably broader and more user-friendly, offering both the general sense (one who makes or forms anything) and the specifically criminal sense (one guilty of forgery), which captures the dual metalworking-and-fraud meaning still alive in common usage today. Neither Burrill nor Webster's engages with the distinction between the maker and the utterer of a forged instrument — a gap that legal treatises of the same period fill, and which researchers should seek in doctrinal sources rather than dictionary entries.
Jurisdictional Note
The scope of who qualifies as a "forger" under a given statute depends heavily on how the jurisdiction defines forgery itself — particularly whether uttering a forged instrument constitutes a distinct offense or is subsumed within forgery. Researchers working across multiple American jurisdictions or between English and American sources should verify the operative statutory definition before assuming uniform meaning.