Definition
A Latin term from old English law with two related but distinct meanings: (1) to obtain or acquire in large quantities; to corner or monopolize a commodity or market — used interchangeably with "engross" in its commercial sense; and (2) to write out a legal document in the formal, enlarged script known as a "court hand" — the official engrossing of instruments for final execution or record.
Common Confusion
INGROSSARE and ENGROSS: These terms are functionally synonymous in historical legal usage. Ingrossare is the Latin-root form appearing in law Latin pleadings, treatises, and early English legal instruments; engross is the anglicized equivalent that displaced it in common practice. A researcher encountering ingrossare in a medieval or early modern source should treat it as the Latin form of engross and follow that term's dual usage — both the commercial monopolization sense and the documentary drafting sense. The two meanings, while seemingly unrelated, share a common conceptual root: gathering or rendering something in its full, complete, or large-scale form.
Why It Matters in Research
Ingrossare is a term of historical and linguistic significance rather than operative modern law. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in law Latin texts, Year Books, early English treatises, and glossaries of the medieval and early modern periods. Because the term carries two distinct meanings — commercial engrossing and documentary engrossing — context is essential to interpretation. The commercial sense (cornering a market or forestalling trade) connects to the historical offenses of engrossing, forestalling, and regrating, which were criminal at common law in England and appear in statutes from the medieval period through the eighteenth century. The documentary sense connects to the practice of engrossing instruments — writing final, official copies of deeds, statutes, and court records in an enlarged, formal script before execution or enrollment. Neither usage survives in active legal practice, but both appear in archival materials and historical legal scholarship.
The term also signals the provenance of a source. Ingrossare is law Latin in form; its presence indicates a text rooted in the pre-English-language legal tradition or a scholarly work drawing directly on that tradition. When a source uses ingrossare rather than engross, it is typically an older or more formally Latin text — a useful dating and interpretive cue when working in historical corpora.
Researchers tracing the history of anti-monopoly doctrine or the law of commercial forestalling should note that ingrossare in the commercial sense feeds directly into the legislative history of engrossing statutes in England, including provisions later consolidated and eventually repealed in the nineteenth century as free-market principles displaced the older hostility to bulk purchasing.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the most complete available treatment of this term among the historical shelf sources. Burrill supplies both meanings — the commercial engrossing sense (citing Spelman) and the documentary sense of writing in a large or court hand — and cross-references engross, signaling that the anglicized entry carries the substantive development. Spelman's Glossarium Archaeologicum is the underlying authority Burrill invokes, placing the term firmly in the antiquarian legal dictionary tradition. Burrill does not elaborate on the criminal dimensions of engrossing as a trade offense in this entry, directing researchers instead to the engross entry for fuller treatment. This is a consistent pattern in historical dictionary practice: Latin-form entries serve as brief bridges, with doctrinal substance reserved for the anglicized headword.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply is any extended treatment of the script-writing sense beyond the bare description of writing in a large or "forensic" character (forensi charactere). The documentary engrossing tradition — the craft practice of engrossers as scribal officers of courts and conveyancers — is underrepresented in dictionary sources generally and must be traced through procedural and conveyancing treatises if a researcher needs substantive detail.