Definition
As a standalone legal modifier, "full" means complete, entire, and lacking nothing in an essential quality. It signals that the thing described is not partial, limited, conditional, or deficient in any respect. Courts have treated "full" as at least as strong as "complete," and in some contexts stronger — an answer described as "full" must be ample and sufficient, not merely technically responsive.
The term appears almost exclusively as a modifier and acquires its legal significance from the noun it qualifies. The following compound uses are the most consequential:
1. Full age. The age of legal majority — twenty-one years at common law, twenty-five in the civil law. A person of full age has capacity to contract, sue, and hold property without the assistance of a guardian or next friend.
2. Full answer. In pleading, a complete and meritorious answer to a complaint or bill; one not wanting in any material respect. A full answer goes to the substance, not merely the form, of what is alleged.
3. Full blood. Descent from the same father and mother; whole blood, as distinguished from half-blood. Relevant in inheritance and intestacy contexts where the law historically distinguished between kindred of the full blood and half-blood.
4. Full court. A session in which all members of a court (or at least a quorum sufficient for the court to act at its highest authority) are sitting together. Contrasted with a panel or chamber of fewer judges.
5. Full defense. In common-law pleading, the formal general defense, asserting the defendant's right to defend the whole of the action with all legal force. Now largely obsolete as a technical pleading form but survives in the concept of a complete defense on the merits.
6. Full faith and credit. The constitutional obligation requiring each state to honor the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. The phrase has independent legal significance and is treated under its own doctrine; see encyclopedia entries above.
7. Full price. A fair or reasonable price; adequate consideration reflecting the actual value of the subject matter.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Containing the maximum possible amount that can fit in the space available; complete, with nothing omitted; total, entire.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Filled up, having within its limits all that it can contain; abundantly furnished or provided; sufficient in quantity, quality, or degree; copious; plenteous; ample; adequate.
The common meaning and the legal meaning share the same core — completeness, sufficiency, absence of deficiency. The gap lies in precision of application. In ordinary use, "full" is relative (a glass can be full enough). In legal use, "full" is often an objective threshold: a full answer either meets the pleading standard or it does not; full faith and credit either attaches or it does not. Legal usage also generates fixed compound terms with specific doctrinal content that common usage does not carry.
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Common Confusion
"Full" as a modifier is sometimes treated as merely emphatic — a rhetorical intensifier meaning "very complete" — when in legal instruments and pleadings it operates as a substantive standard. Describing an answer, a defense, or a release as "full" carries enforceable meaning, not stylistic flourish. Similarly, "full faith and credit" is frequently cited loosely to mean any obligation of interstate recognition, when the doctrine has defined limits that the shorthand phrase obscures.
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Why It Matters in Research
Because "full" functions almost entirely as a modifier, its research significance depends on the compound term. Researchers should approach each "full [noun]" construction as a potentially independent doctrine rather than assuming the ordinary meaning of the adjective resolves the question.
Historical sources frequently define the compounds (full age, full blood, full defense) without cross-referencing their interaction with statutes that later modified or displaced the common-law rule. Full age at common law was twenty-one, but state legislatures lowered the age of majority to eighteen in the 1970s in most U.S. jurisdictions; historical dictionary definitions citing twenty-one are accurate for their period but misleading for modern research.
Full faith and credit is the most research-intensive compound. The constitutional text (Art. IV, § 1) has been layered with federal implementing statutes — the Full Faith and Credit Act (28 U.S.C. § 1738), the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA), and UIFSA — each of which modifies how the baseline obligation operates in specific subject-matter contexts. A researcher finding "full faith and credit" in a pre-PKPA custody case is reading doctrine that has since been substantially federalized.
Full guardianship versus limited guardianship is a modern statutory distinction not present in older sources. Historical dictionaries will not reflect the contemporary default preference for limited guardianship under state adult guardianship reform statutes.
Corpus searches for "full" alone will generate noise. Searching for specific compounds — "full age," "full faith," "full defense," "full blood" — is the productive strategy.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge without meaningful disagreement: "full" means complete, entire, perfect, adequate, not wanting in any essential quality. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, and Anderson all reach the same conclusion with minor variation in phrasing. Black's (1st ed.) adds the useful point, sourced to Alabama authority, that "full" is at least as extensive as "complete" — meaning courts will not treat the word as a weaker modifier than its apparent synonyms.
Anderson's is the most useful of the shelf sources for this term because it catalogs the compound forms — full age, full blood, full court, full defense, full faith and credit, full price — giving researchers a checklist of derivative concepts. Bouvier and Rapalje & Lawrence treat the term briefly; the Rapalje entry reproduced in the source material is a maxims entry that does not bear on the term itself.
What the historical dictionaries do not capture: the modern statutory displacement of common-law rules for full age, the federalization of full faith and credit in family law contexts, and the emergence of limited versus full guardianship as a statutory framework. For any of these, historical dictionary definitions are the starting point, not the endpoint.
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Jurisdictional Note
The age of majority — the threshold for "full age" — is eighteen in most U.S. states following legislative reform in the 1970s, superseding the common-law rule of twenty-one. Civil-law jurisdictions traditionally used twenty-five. Researchers working across time periods or comparing common-law and civil-law sources must identify which standard applies.
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