Definition
Fungibles (also: fungible things) are goods or assets that are interchangeable with others of the same kind — meaning any unit is equivalent to any other unit of the same quality and quantity, and one can be substituted for another without loss or distinction. Classic examples include grain, oil, currency, and standardized commodities. The legal significance lies in obligation and return: when fungibles are delivered, lent, or held, the recipient need not return the identical items received, only an equivalent quantity and quality of the same type.
The term functions primarily in property law, contract law, and the law of bailment. A bailment of fungibles (sometimes called an "irregular bailment" or mutuum in the civil law tradition) differs from ordinary bailment precisely because the bailee acquires title to the goods and owes only a return in kind — not the specific objects originally delivered. This is how grain storage elevators, commodity depositories, and bank deposits operate.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Fungibles" is listed simply as the plural of "fungible," itself an adjective meaning mutually interchangeable. In general use, "fungible" has broadened into policy and business contexts (e.g., "budget dollars are fungible") to mean any resource that can be freely redirected or substituted.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Things which may be furnished or restored in kind, as distinguished from specific things… Movable goods which may be valued by weight or measure, in contradistinction from those which must be judged of individually."
The gap worth noting: In ordinary modern usage, "fungible" is an adjective applied loosely to anything substitutable, including abstract resources like political capital or regulatory credits. In legal usage, "fungibles" is a precise noun category with direct consequences for title, risk of loss, and the nature of the obligation owed — particularly in bailment and commodity law. A researcher who brings the casual modern meaning to historical legal texts will miss those structural consequences.
Common Confusion
Fungibles are sometimes confused with consumables (res quae usu consumuntur). The categories overlap significantly — most fungibles are also consumed in use — but they are not identical. Consumables are defined by the fact that use destroys them; fungibles are defined by interchangeability. Wine is both fungible and consumable. A rare antique coin held as a collectible might be consumable in theory but is not fungible because its value is specific and individual. Historical sources, including civil law texts absorbed into Anglo-American treatise literature, sometimes conflate these categories or use them interchangeably. Read the context carefully.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "fungibles" is not native to common law's original vocabulary — it entered Anglo-American legal writing primarily through civilian influence, appearing in treatises on bailment, sales, and property that drew heavily on Roman law categories (particularly mutuum, the loan for consumption). Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century sources should expect to find the concept expressed variously as "goods sold by weight, number, or measure," "movable goods estimated in kind," or without any single term at all. The Latin fungibiles res or res fungibiles may appear in treatise footnotes and glossaries without translation.
In modern contexts, "fungibles" has become critical in commercial law — particularly under Article 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code (warehouse receipts and documents of title) and in commodities and securities regulation, where the fungibility of instruments determines how commingling, tracing, and loss allocation rules apply. A researcher moving from nineteenth-century bailment doctrine to modern UCC-based warehouse law needs to track how the underlying concept persisted while the vocabulary standardized.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry is notably thin — it gestures at the concept through its definition of movable goods ("which may be estimated by weight, number, or measure") without giving the term its own standalone treatment. This is a meaningful gap: researchers relying solely on that dictionary to understand the concept as it appears in legal argument or judicial opinions of the same era will be underserved.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence do not give "fungibles" a dedicated entry. The concept surfaces indirectly in their treatment of related terms. Their working definition — "movable goods, which may be estimated by weight, number, or measure; such as corn, wine, or money" — is accurate as far as it goes and tracks the civilian formulation faithfully. Webster's 1913 is more explicit in drawing the key distinction: fungibles are defined against specific things, and the criterion of valuation by weight or measure (rather than individual judgment) is rightly identified as the operative distinction.
Neither source addresses the legal consequences of fungibility — the title transfer in irregular bailment, the commingling problem, or the obligations of return — which is where the term's legal work is actually done. For those dimensions, researchers should look to treatise literature on bailment (Story's Commentaries on the Law of Bailments being the standard nineteenth-century American authority) and, for modern doctrine, the UCC Article 7 official comments.
Jurisdictional Note
The concept of fungibles operates consistently across common law jurisdictions, though the term itself appears more frequently in civil law-influenced systems and in American commercial law than in traditional English case law. Jurisdictions with significant civil law heritage (Louisiana, Quebec) may define and apply the category with greater doctrinal precision than common law states.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Property Law (classification of property; bailment and title); Contract Law (obligations of return; mutuum and loan for consumption); Bailment (irregular bailment; commingling of fungible goods).