GRAND

8 definitions found across Law Mind sources

GRANDAuthored
The Law Mind • 1160 words
Definition
In law, grand functions as a qualifying adjective meaning great, chief, or principal in rank, magnitude, or legal significance. It does not stand alone as a legal term of art but modifies other terms, elevating them in one of three ways: 1. Seriousness or degree. Grand larceny denotes theft above a threshold of gravity, distinguished from petit or petty larceny. The modifier signals that the offense belongs to the more serious category warranting more severe consequences. 2. Procedural primacy or superiority. Grand jury, grand assize, grand cape, and grand distress describe institutions or procedures that are superior in legal weight or precedence to their petit or common counterparts. Grand jury, the most important surviving use, refers to the body that investigates and formally charges, as distinct from the petit jury that tries. 3. Generational relationship. In family and succession law, grand marks one degree of removal: grandchild, grandparent. This usage is common rather than exclusively legal but appears in wills and statutes. The term carries no independent operative meaning; its legal significance is entirely a function of the compound it forms. ---
Common Language
Wiktionary: Large, senior (high-ranking), intense, extreme, or exceptional; great in size or extent; imposing, illustrious, magnificent. Webster's 1913: Of large size or extent; great; extensive; relatively great; greatest; chief; principal. Also fine or imposing in appearance; majestic, splendid, sublime. The common and legal meanings share the same root sense of greatness or superiority, so there is no sharp semantic gap. The legal significance lies not in the word itself but in the precision with which legal usage deploys it: in law, grand is a term of art only when it appears in recognized compound expressions (grand jury, grand larceny, grand assize), where it marks a defined legal category rather than merely expressing relative magnitude. A researcher who reads grand in a historical legal document should immediately ask which compound is being invoked, because the legal consequences differ significantly from one compound to the next. ---
Common Confusion
Grand vs. Petit/Petty. These are paired opposites in the common law tradition. Grand marks the more serious, more senior, or procedurally superior version of a legal concept; petit or petty marks the lesser. The pairing appears most prominently in grand jury versus petit jury and grand larceny versus petit larceny. Confusion arises because modern American usage has largely retired petit in everyday speech, causing researchers to miss the structural relationship when reading historical sources. The two terms only make full sense as a pair. ---
Why It Matters in Research
Because grand never stands alone, corpus searches on the bare word will return noise. Effective searching requires the full compound: grand jury, grand larceny, grand assize, grand serjeanty, grand cape, grand distress. Each compound has its own doctrinal history and should be researched independently. The most consequential compound for modern legal research is grand jury, which carries constitutional dimensions under the Fifth Amendment's indictment clause. Researchers working on federal criminal procedure, charging decisions, or prosecutorial power will move quickly from this term to the constitutional and criminal law encyclopedia entries linked above. Historically, several grand compounds that appear frequently in English common law sources — grand assize, grand cape, grand serjeanty — are obsolete in American practice. Encountering them in pre-nineteenth-century materials signals English feudal or procedural context. Do not map their meanings onto modern American doctrine. The threshold between grand larceny and petit larceny has changed repeatedly across time and jurisdiction. A dollar amount that constituted grand larceny in one era or state may have been petit larceny in another. Researchers using historical sources to trace larceny doctrine must anchor their analysis to specific times and places; the label grand does not carry a stable monetary meaning across the corpus. In family law and testamentary materials, grand in generational compounds (grandchild, grandparent) becomes significant when interpreting class gifts in wills. Courts have sometimes had to decide whether a bequest to "grandchildren" includes great-grandchildren or only the immediate next generation down. The word's ordinary magnitude sense creates interpretive ambiguity in instruments of succession. ---
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources agree completely on the core meaning. Burrill traces grand to the Law French graund and the Latin magnus, noting that it denotes superiority in magnitude, number, quality, precedence, dignity, importance, or legal efficacy. Anderson echoes this: great, greatest, chief, advanced in rank, opposed to common, petit, or petty. The pairing with petit is identified by both sources as the structural principle. Black's Second Edition declines to define grand independently, instead directing readers to its compound entries — assize, bill of sale, cape, distress, jury, larceny, serjeanty. This editorial choice confirms what the other dictionaries imply: grand has no freestanding doctrinal content. Rapalje and Lawrence do not appear to have a dedicated entry for grand, though their corpus contains the compounds. The absence is consistent with Black's approach; nineteenth-century legal lexicographers generally treated grand as definitionally thin on its own. None of the historical sources grapples with the constitutional development of grand jury doctrine under American law, which is the area where modern researchers will most need supplementary sources beyond the historical dictionaries. The Fifth Amendment dimension, the federal-versus-state incorporation question, and the procedural rules governing grand jury secrecy and witness rights all postdate or exceed the scope of these sources. ---
Jurisdictional Note
The grand jury guarantee of the Fifth Amendment applies in federal prosecutions but has not been incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. States therefore vary significantly in whether and how they use grand juries for felony charging. Similarly, the boundary between grand and petit larceny — now typically framed as felony versus misdemeanor theft — is set by state statute and differs across jurisdictions in both threshold amount and label. ---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Grand Jury — Function, Procedure, and Powers (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia) Grand Jury — Fifth Amendment in Grand Jury Proceedings (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia) The Fifth Amendment — Grand Jury Indictment Clause (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia) ---
Related Terms
Grand jury — the principal surviving compound in modern American legal practice Grand larceny — the serious-theft application; pair with petit larceny Petit jury / Petty jury — structural opposite; the trial jury Petit larceny / Petty larceny — the lesser-theft counterpart Grand assize — obsolete English procedure; relevant to medieval and early modern common law research Grand serjeanty — feudal tenure; historical significance only Grand cape — obsolete real action procedure Indictment — the product of grand jury proceedings Fifth Amendment — constitutional home of the grand jury guarantee in federal law Felony — modern functional equivalent of the grand/petit distinction in grading offenses
GRANDmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888
(576) GRAMMAR SCHOOL, (in a will). Jac. 474, 484. cles of their inquiry, by a charge from the GRAMMAR SCHOOLS, (in State constitution). judge. They then withdraw to sit, and 103 Mass. 94, 97. Grammatica falsa non vitiat chartam (9 Co. 48): False grammar does not vitiate a deed. GRANARY, (defined). 47 N. H. 101, 104.
GRANDmain
Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890
Great; greatest; chief; advanced in rank; opposed to common, petit or petty, q. v. As, in grand jury or inquest, grand larceny; and, also, as in grandchild and grandparent, qq. v.
GRANDmain
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867
L. Fr. Great; large. Grand arbres; large trees. Dyer, 79, (Fr. ed.) [L. Fr. graund; Lat. magnus.) Great; large; high. A word formed from the French, and still in use; contrasted generally with petty, (Fr. petit,) and denoting superiority either in magnitude, number or quality, as grand jury, grand larceny; or in point of precedence, dignity, importance or legal efficacy, as grand assize, grand cape, grand distress, (qq. v.)
GRANDa.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
Of large size or extent; great; extensive; hence, relatively great; greatest; chief; principal; as, a grand mountain; a grand army; a grand mistake. "Our grand foe, Satan." Milton. Making so bold . . . to unseal Their grand commission. Shak. Great in size, and fine or imposing in appearance or impression; illustrious, dignifled, or noble (said of persons); majestic, splendid, magnificent, or sublime (said of things); as, a grand monarch; a grand lord; a grand general; a grand view; a grand conception. They are the highest models of expression, the unapproached masters of the grand style. M. Arnold. Having higher rank or more dignity, size, or importance than other persons or things of the same name; as, a grand lodge; a grand vizier; a grand piano, etc. Standing in the second or some more remote degree of parentage or descent; -- generalIy used in composition; as, grandfather, grandson, grandchild, etc. What cause Mov'd our grand parents, in that happy state, Favor'd of Heaven so highly, to fall off From their Creator. Milton. Grand action, a pianoforte action, used in grand pianos, in which special devices are employed to obtain perfect action of the hammer in striking and leaving the string. -- Grand Army of the Republic, an organized voluntary association of men who served in the Union army or navy during the civil war in the United States. The order has chapters, called Posts, throughout the country. -- Grand cross. (a) The highest rank of knighthood in the Order of the Bath. (b) A knight grand cross. -- Grand cordon, the cordon or broad ribbon, identified with the highest grade in certain honorary orders; hence, a person who holds that grade. -- Grand days (Eng. Law), certain days in the terms which are observed as holidays in the inns of court and chancery (Candlemas, Ascension, St. John Baptist's, and All Saints' Days); called also Dies non juridici. -- Grand duchess. (a) The wife or widow of a grand duke. (b) A lady having the sovereignty of a duchy in her own right. (c) In Russia, a daughter of the Czar. -- Grand duke. (a) A sovereign duke, inferior in rank to a king; as, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. (b) In Russia, a son of the Czar. (c) (Zoöl.) The European great horned owl or eagle owl (Bubo maximas). -- Grand-guard, or Grandegarde, a piece of plate armor used in tournaments as an extra protection for the left shoulder and breast. -- Grand juror, a member of a grand jury. -- Grand jury (Law), a jury of not less than twelve men, and not more than twenty-three, whose duty it is, in private session, to examine into accusations against persons charged with crime, and if they see just cause, then to find bills of indictment against them, to be presented to the court; -- called also grand inquest. -- Grand juryman, a grand juror. -- Grand larceny. (Law) See under Larceny. -- Grand lodge, the chief lodge, or governing body, among Freemasons and other secret orders. -- Grand master. (a) The head of one of the military orders of knighthood, as the Templars, Hospitallers, etc. (b) The head of the order of Freemasons or of Good Templars, etc. -- Grand paunch, a glutton or gourmand. [Obs.] Holland. -- Grand pensionary. See under Pensionary. -- Grand piano (Mus.), a large piano, usually harp-shaped, in which the wires or strings are generally triplicated, increasing the power, and all the mechanism is introduced in the most effective manner, regardless of the size of the instrument. -- Grand relief (Sculp.), alto relievo. -- Grand Seignior. See under Seignior. -- Grand stand, the principal stand, or erection for spectators, at a, race course, etc. -- Grand vicar (Eccl.), a principal vicar; an ecclesiastical delegate in France. -- Grand vizier. See under Vizier.
grandadj
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
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Large, senior (high-ranking), intense, extreme, or exceptional | Large, senior (high-ranking), intense, extreme, or exceptional | Of a large size or extent; great. | Large, senior (high-ranking), intense, extreme, or exceptional | Great in size, and fine or imposing in appearance or impression; illustrious, dignified, magnificent. | Large, senior (high-ranking), intense, extreme, or exceptional | Having higher rank or more dignity, size, or importance than other persons or things of the same name. | Standing in the second or some more remote degree of parentage or descent (see grand-). | Fine; lovely. | Containing all the parts proper to a given form of composition.
grandnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
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A grandparent or grandchild.
Grandname
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
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A placename | A commune in Vosges department, Grand Est, France. | A placename | A ghost town (historic place) in Ellis County, Oklahoma, United States. | A surname.

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