Definition
In legal usage, "increase" carries two primary technical meanings distinct from its ordinary sense of growth or enlargement:
(1) PRODUCE OF LAND: The fruits, crops, or yield grown from or produced by the cultivation of land. This meaning addresses what the land itself generates and is relevant to landlord-tenant law, agricultural leases, inheritance, and disputes over the fruits of real property.
(2) OFFSPRING OF ANIMALS: The young or progeny born of livestock or other animals. This usage appears most frequently in property law contexts involving the ownership or bequest of animals, and — in the antebellum legal record — in cases involving enslaved persons. Courts interpreting instruments that conveyed the "increase" of a female enslaved person consistently held the term was limited to her children, not to a broader class of descendants.
(3) COSTS OF INCREASE (COSTS DE INCREMENTO): A now-obsolete English procedural concept referring to the actual costs assessed by the court's officer beyond the nominal sum of 40 shillings that juries historically awarded to successful litigants. The court's officer would tax and supplement the jury's award to reflect the genuine costs of litigation. This practice gave rise to the phrase "costs de incremento," meaning costs added by the court's increment above the jury's nominal figure.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To become larger or greater in quantity, size, or degree; to multiply; to grow.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To become greater in size, quantity, number, degree, value, intensity, power, or reputation; to grow; to augment; to advance.
In ordinary English, "increase" is a verb or noun describing any act or process of becoming more. In legal usage, the term is almost always a noun with a narrow technical referent — specifically the produce of land or the offspring of animals. A researcher encountering "increase" in a deed, will, lease, or judicial opinion should not assume the word carries its common meaning of growth or enlargement; in context it typically designates a category of property.
Common Confusion
INCREASE VS. ACCRETION, INCOME, AND EARNINGS
Historical dictionaries uniformly distinguish "increase" from related property concepts. Anderson's and Bouvier's both flag the comparison explicitly. Accretion refers to additions to land by natural deposit (soil carried by water); income refers to returns from labor or investment; earnings similarly implies active production by a person. "Increase" in the produce-of-land sense is narrower — it means what the land itself yields through cultivation, not what accrues geologically or what a person earns. Researchers should consult the instrument's precise language rather than treating these terms as interchangeable.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "increase" presents three navigational challenges for researchers working in the Law Mind corpus:
First, the produce-of-land meaning appears heavily in early agricultural lease and tenancy disputes, crop-lien cases, and inheritance litigation. When a will or deed conveys "land and its increase," courts read "increase" as encompassing crops and yields — a question that bears on who holds title to a season's harvest during an estate administration or tenancy dispute. Researchers working in 19th-century agricultural states will encounter this meaning frequently.
Second, the offspring-of-animals meaning intersects with livestock ownership disputes and, critically, with the antebellum American slavery record. Rapalje & Lawrence and Burrill's both cite cases from Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia construing the "increase" of a female enslaved person. Burrill's quotes the rule directly: "Increase of a female slave has no broader meaning than children." These citations — drawn from real antebellum state reporters — are among the most historically charged appearances of this legal term and require researchers to approach the corpus with that context in mind. The legal construction of enslaved people as property whose offspring constituted "increase" is a recurring feature of southern state case law through the Civil War period.
Third, costs of increase (costs de incremento) is an archaic English procedural term that will appear in older common-law pleading and practice materials but has no operational significance in modern American practice. Researchers encountering the phrase in historical sources should not conflate it with any modern costs-shifting doctrine.
Insurance law presents a fourth, separate usage: Bouvier's cross-references "increase of risk" in insurance policy contexts, where "increase" modifies "risk" rather than standing as an independent legal noun. That usage follows ordinary meaning and requires no special treatment.
Historical Dictionary Support
All six shelf sources are in agreement on the two core definitions — produce of land and offspring of animals — with no significant divergence. The uniformity is itself notable: across more than a century of legal lexicography, no source introduces a third independent legal meaning beyond the produce/offspring pair and the costs-of-increase procedural concept.
Burrill's is the most precise on the slavery-era offspring question, quoting directly from a North Carolina case to establish that "increase" of a female enslaved person did not extend beyond her immediate children to a broader class. Rapalje & Lawrence provides the fullest citation string for this line of cases, drawing from Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia reporters — a useful index for researchers tracing the antebellum caselaw.
Anderson's distinguishes "increase" from accretion, earnings, and income explicitly, which is the most useful analytical move in the historical dictionary literature. Bouvier's adds the insurance-risk cross-reference, the only shelf source to flag that collateral usage. Black's (both editions) keep the definitions spare and consistent with the others.
None of the historical dictionaries address the term's modern regulatory or statutory uses — where "increase" appears in rate-setting, wage law, tax assessment, or administrative rulemaking contexts — because those bodies of law postdate the principal editions. Researchers working in those areas should treat the historical definitions as background context only.
Jurisdictional Note
The produce-of-land and offspring-of-animals meanings were operative across American common-law jurisdictions but generated the densest case law in southern and mid-Atlantic states, where agricultural tenancy and antebellum property disputes over enslaved people were most prevalent. The costs-of-increase doctrine is an English common-law practice with limited American reception; most American jurisdictions developed independent costs regimes without adopting the English nomenclature.