Definition
An archaic legal term drawn from ancient English statutes with three closely related meanings: (1) a printing office or establishment; (2) the art or practice of printing; (3) a single print or impression. The word does not represent a distinct legal concept but rather served as the operative noun in early statutory provisions regulating the printing trade in England. It appears in legal instruments where modern drafters would use "printing house," "printing," or "impression" as appropriate to context.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A printer or printing establishment; the art or act of printing; a single instance of printing.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A print or impression; a printing establishment; the art of printing.
The common and legal meanings are essentially identical here. The term entered legal texts directly from ordinary usage rather than acquiring any specialized legal sense. Its appearance in historical dictionaries reflects the need to gloss an unfamiliar word for lawyers encountering old statutes, not to define a term of art.
Why It Matters in Research
IMPRIMERY is a term researchers will encounter only in historical English statutes and the legal dictionaries that gloss them. It carries no modern operative force and appears in no living legal doctrine. Its significance is purely interpretive: when a researcher encounters the word in a pre-modern English statute or in a transcription of one, understanding that it may mean a printing establishment, the act of printing, or a specific impression is essential to parsing the provision correctly.
The three-way ambiguity matters in context. A statute licensing an "imprimery" likely means a physical printing establishment. A statute prohibiting unlicensed "imprimery" likely means the practice of printing. A statute addressing the validity of a particular "imprimery" likely means a specific printed copy or impression. Context must drive selection among the three meanings.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should note that this term will surface chiefly in materials concerning early press regulation, book trade law, and licensing of printers — areas that were active and contested in Tudor and Stuart England. Cross-referencing statutes on the regulation of the press, seditious libel, and the Stationers' Company may be productive when the term appears. The word is also a marker of document age: its presence in an instrument is a reliable signal that the source predates modern printing-trade vocabulary.
Do not expect the word to appear in American legal materials. The term did not migrate meaningfully into colonial or early American statutory drafting.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in close agreement, and none departs in substance from the others. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier give the fullest treatment, all three tracking the same three-part meaning: printing office, the art of printing, print or impression. Rapalje & Lawrence compress to the shortest version — "a print or impression" only, citing Jacob's Law Dictionary — which is not wrong but omits the establishment and practice senses recognized by the other sources.
No source attributes a technical legal meaning to the term beyond its descriptive function in statutes. No source cites a specific statute by name, which is a gap: the phrase "some of the ancient English statutes" in Black's and Bouvier is unhelpfully vague and forecloses easy verification. Jacob's Law Dictionary, cited by Rapalje & Lawrence, is the oldest authority in the chain and the likely origin of the entry's language across all four dictionaries. Webster's 1913, which aligns precisely with the legal dictionaries, confirms that the word had no legal-specific sense — it was ordinary vocabulary pressed into statutory service.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Press Regulation and Licensing in Early English Law; History of the English Printing Trade.