Definition
A Law French adverb meaning "largely" or "greatly." In legal sources, *grossement* appears almost exclusively in the compound phrase *grossement enseint* — "big with child" — used in older pleading and evidence contexts to describe a woman in an advanced or visibly apparent state of pregnancy. The term itself carries no independent doctrinal weight; its legal significance is entirely contextual, arising from the factual or evidentiary significance of visible pregnancy in matters such as pleas of the belly, succession, legitimacy, and the execution of sentence.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The term is not part of modern English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The term had no circulation in general English usage even by the nineteenth century.
*Editorial note:* This is pure Law French carried into English legal writing without translation. Readers encountering it in historical sources should treat it as a term of art, not an English word with an accessible ordinary meaning.
Common Confusion
*Grossement enseint* is sometimes misread as a term of art unto itself, as if *enseint* were the operative word and *grossement* mere intensifier with no legal consequence. The pairing matters: *enseint* alone (pregnant) was legally significant in some contexts, but *grossement enseint* signaled an advanced, externally evident pregnancy — a distinction that could determine whether a plea of the belly would be credited by a jury of matrons. Readers should not conflate simple pregnancy (*enseint*) with the heightened showing implied by the compound phrase.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter *grossement* almost nowhere except as part of *grossement enseint* in early English reports and pleading materials. Its primary doctrinal home is the **plea of the belly** — a plea by a condemned woman that execution of sentence should be stayed because she was pregnant. Courts and juries of matrons were concerned specifically with whether the pregnancy was *grossement* apparent, i.e., sufficiently advanced to be verified.
The term appears in Plowden's *Commentaries* (Plowd. 76) and scattered in later reports through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the nineteenth century it had effectively disappeared from American legal writing, though it persisted longer in English sources. Researchers working in colonial American records, early criminal proceedings, or English equity and common law reports from roughly 1550–1750 are most likely to encounter it.
Trap for the unwary: automated transcription and early printed editions sometimes render *grossement* as *grossment*, *grosement*, or break it from *enseint* across a line, obscuring the compound. Search for both words independently and in combination when surveying historical databases.
The term also touches succession and inheritance: proof that a widow was *grossement enseint* at the time of her husband's death could bear on the legitimacy and timing of a posthumous child's claim to the estate. This application appears more in equity and chancery records than in criminal pleading.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core meaning — "largely, greatly" — and all direct the reader immediately to *grossement enseint* as the operative phrase. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) are nearly identical entries, both citing Plowd. 76. Burrill adds a citation to 2 Mod. 8 and appends the gloss "substantial; material; essential," suggesting a slightly broader adverbial range in legal contexts beyond mere physical size — the word could intensify qualitative as well as quantitative descriptions.
None of the source dictionaries addresses the procedural mechanics of the plea of the belly or the role *grossement enseint* played in jury-of-matrons proceedings, which limits their usefulness for substantive research. They function here as glossaries rather than guides to doctrine.
The Plowden citation (*Commentaries*, folio 76) is genuine and among the earliest authoritative English law French sources; researchers should consult it directly for primary context rather than relying on the dictionary summaries.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: *Plea of the Belly*; *Law French in English Legal Sources*