Definition
A Law French term appearing in medieval and early English legal texts with two related but distinct senses:
1. Substance or materiality. Used to indicate the essential or principal matter of a thing, as distinguished from incidental or subordinate particulars. A point described as *en gros* was a point of substance — one going to the core of a claim or pleading.
2. Great or large; the whole of a thing, as opposed to a part or parcel. Used in descriptions of physical property and in procedural formulas directing attention to the entirety of a subject before its subdivision.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "gro" — no relevant modern English legal or general meaning.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A heavy silk fabric with a dull finish, as in "gros de Naples" or "gros de Tours."
The common English uses of this word share no meaningful connection to the legal term. The legal sense derives entirely from Law French and Norman usage embedded in medieval pleading practice. A researcher encountering *gros* in an early Year Book or abridgment should not associate it with either the textile term or any modern English cognate.
Common Confusion
*Gros* is occasionally confused with the commercial term *gross* (meaning twelve dozen, or total before deductions), which shares a common root but carries an entirely different legal meaning in trade and contract law. The Law French *gros* also superficially resembles the Latin *grossus*, which appears in some medieval ecclesiastical and notarial records with related but not identical meaning. Context — particularly whether a source is in Law French, Latin, or later English — is the primary guide.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a Year Book and early plea roll term. Researchers working in pre-1600 English legal sources will encounter it in the formulaic language of pleading, particularly in passages distinguishing principal issues from collateral ones. The phrase *en gros* signals that what follows concerns substance rather than form — a distinction that mattered enormously in common law pleading where procedural defects and substantive failures were treated differently.
The phrase *mettes le gros avant le parcel* ("put the whole before the part") reflects a pleading principle about the order and priority of allegations. Understanding this formula helps researchers interpret the structure of early pleadings rather than reading them as arbitrary sequences.
*Gros mereme* (large timber or wood) appears in property disputes and forest law contexts. Researchers working on medieval land records, timber rights, or common law property should note that size and character of timber had legal significance — large wood (*gros mereme*) often carried different legal incidents than underwood or smaller growth.
Because *gros* appears in sources written in Law French, it will not always be indexed or glossed in later English-language abridgments. Researchers relying on 18th- or 19th-century digests may find that these nuances are collapsed or lost. Burrill preserves the term, but it is largely absent from later American legal dictionaries, reflecting the obsolescence of Law French as a working legal language after the 17th century.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary source preserving this term in the Anglo-American legal dictionary tradition. Burrill traces two distinct uses — substance/materiality and greatness/wholeness — and supports both with Year Book citations. The citation to *Britton* (c. 22 and c. 98) grounds the "substance" sense in one of the earliest systematic expositions of English common law. The Year Book references (P. 7 Hen. VI. 47; T. 5 Edw. III. 29) place the property and pleading senses in their original procedural context.
Later standard dictionaries — including Black's and Bouvier's — do not carry this term in any edition, reflecting the degree to which it had fallen out of active legal use by the time American legal lexicography took shape. Burrill, writing mid-19th century with a more historical orientation, preserves it as part of his broader project of documenting Law French and Latin terms still necessary for reading older English sources. No significant divergence among historical sources exists here because the term does not appear broadly enough to generate competing glosses.
Jurisdictional Note
*Gros* has no current operative legal meaning in any common law jurisdiction. Its relevance is purely historical and textual — confined to sources written in Law French or interpreting those sources. English law is the primary jurisdiction of interest.