Definition
A full answer is a response in pleading or in equity that completely and sufficiently meets every material allegation or demand put to the responding party. It is not merely an answer that addresses some of what was asked — it must be ample enough to satisfy all legal requirements imposed by the proceeding in which it is given. The standard is one of completeness: nothing that must be addressed may be left unanswered, and no required element of the response may be omitted or evaded.
The term appears most commonly in equity practice, where defendants were required to answer interrogatories and charges in a bill of complaint under oath. A full answer in that context meant the defendant could not selectively respond or plead ignorance of matters within their knowledge — every charge demanded a responsive, sufficient reply.
Common Confusion
"Full answer" should not be confused with a general denial, which merely traverses the plaintiff's allegations without affirmatively addressing all charges. In equity, a full answer required more than denial — it required responsive engagement with each charge, often including affirmative explanation of the defendant's conduct or knowledge. Nor is it synonymous with an affirmative defense, which adds new matter rather than responding to existing allegations.
Researchers should also distinguish a "full answer" from a "sufficient answer" in modern discovery practice. While courts use similar language, the discovery standard is governed by the applicable rules of civil procedure (e.g., Rule 37 of the Federal Rules), not by the equity pleading doctrine Bouvier describes.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in equity pleading materials — particularly pre-merger sources predating the fusion of law and equity under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) and equivalent state reforms — will encounter "full answer" as a term of art with real procedural weight. In chancery practice, a defendant's failure to give a full answer could expose them to being held in contempt or have their answer stricken, and the sufficiency of an answer was a litigated question in its own right.
The term is largely obsolete in modern pleading under notice-pleading regimes, where the Federal Rules and their state counterparts replaced the granular requirements of equity pleading. Researchers should be cautious about importing the standard from historical equity sources into modern procedural analysis — the concept survives in spirit (answers must admit, deny, or state insufficient knowledge as to each allegation) but the formal doctrine of "full answer" as an independent legal standard does not carry over intact.
In discovery contexts, a related idea persists: interrogatory answers and deposition responses must be complete and not evasive. Courts will occasionally use language echoing the full-answer standard when evaluating discovery compliance, but this is not a direct doctrinal continuation.
When reading 19th-century Alabama reports or similar antebellum equity decisions — the jurisdiction cited in Bouvier's — note that equity procedure in those courts was often more formally tied to English chancery models than equity practice in northern states of the same period. A "full answer" in that context carried specific technical expectations about scope and oath.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary historical source for this term. Bouvier defines a full answer as one that "meets all the legal requirements" and is "ample and sufficient," adding that it is "as extensive a term as though 'complete' had been super-added." This formulation is characteristically Bouvier: precise about the sufficiency standard while leaving its application to context and case law. The citation to Burrill and to a mid-19th-century Alabama equity decision (22 Ala. R. 817) anchors the term firmly in antebellum equity pleading practice.
No significant divergence exists across historical dictionaries on this point — the term was narrow enough in usage that variation is minimal. What historical sources do not address is the disappearance of the doctrine following procedural merger: they treat "full answer" as a stable requirement without anticipating that the procedural framework sustaining it would be abolished.