Definition
In legal usage, LARGE appears almost exclusively as a component of compound phrases rather than as a standalone legal term. Its primary legal significance arises in three contexts:
1. AT LARGE: A person, animal, or thing not confined, restrained, or under control. Used in criminal law (a fugitive or escaped prisoner is said to be "at large"), in tort and animal law (livestock running at large), and in political contexts (an official elected at large represents an entire jurisdiction rather than a subdivision).
2. COMMON LARGE (also: Common in Gross): A type of common right in English property law that attaches to a person rather than to land. Unlike common appendant or common appurtenant—which run with specific parcels of land—common large is a personal inheritance held by deed or prescription, distinct from any landed property. It is a form of incorporeal hereditament, heritable by the holder's heirs.
3. AS A MODIFIER (Large): In older English and Anglo-French legal usage, *large* (from the Law French *large*) carried the sense of "broad" or "liberal"—the opposite of strict or narrow. A power granted in *large* terms was one read expansively; an interpretation *large* was a liberal rather than a strict construction.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Primarily a size descriptor—one of the standard manufactured sizes between medium and extra-large. Colloquially, British slang for a thousand pounds.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Exceeding most other things of like kind in bulk, capacity, quantity, superficial dimensions, or number of constituent units; big; great; capacious; extensive." Also: abundant, ample.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant in two directions. First, common large as a property law term has nothing to do with physical size—it describes a type of right (personal rather than appurtenant) that would be wholly invisible to a researcher working from the ordinary English sense. Second, the Law French sense of "broad" or "liberal" shapes older doctrinal language around interpretation and grants of power; a phrase like "construed large" in a historical source signals a mode of legal reasoning, not a measurement.
Common Confusion
COMMON LARGE vs. COMMON IN GROSS: These terms refer to the same concept from different angles. Common large emphasizes the personal (non-appurtenant) nature of the right; common in gross emphasizes that the right exists independently of land ownership. Historical sources use both interchangeably, and some dictionaries—including Black's—cross-reference the entry for Gross when explaining large. Researchers should search both terms.
AT LARGE vs. LARGE (standalone): When a historical source uses the unmodified word "large" in a legal context, it is almost always operating in the Law French sense (broad/liberal) rather than describing physical scale. Do not import the modern size-descriptor meaning into older legal texts.
Why It Matters in Research
The word *large* is a research trap precisely because it is so common in ordinary English. Full-text corpus searches for "large" will return overwhelming noise. Meaningful legal results require searching compound phrases: "at large," "common large," "construed large," or "pures et larges."
For property law research into common rights, the critical distinction is appendant/appurtenant versus in gross/large. Historical English sources—particularly those drawing on Blackstone's Commentaries—use *common large* as the operative term; American sources from the nineteenth century more often use *common in gross*. A researcher tracing the same doctrine across an Anglo-American corpus needs both formulations.
The Law French adjectival sense (broad, liberal) appears frequently in historical texts addressing statutory construction, grants of authority, and powers of attorney. When Bracton-era or Britton-era sources use *large* or the phrase *pures et larges*, they are signaling scope of construction, not describing a size. This sense fades from American legal usage by the early nineteenth century but persists in English sources longer.
Anderson's Law Dictionary adds no independent definition but cross-references AT LARGE, ENLARGE, GREAT, and GROSS—a useful navigational cluster indicating that these are the live legal concepts. The term *large* standing alone is almost always a gateway, not a destination.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources agree on the fundamentals and add little beyond cross-referencing. Black's (both editions) and Burrill converge on the Law French definition: *large* means "broad," the opposite of *estreyte* (strait or strict), citing Britton, chapter 34. This source citation is consistent across the dictionaries and provides a firm anchor for the medieval English usage.
Black's first edition also provides the property law definition of common large, drawing directly on Blackstone (2 Bl. Comm. 34). The description—a species of common annexed to a person and his heirs, held by deed or prescription, entirely distinct from any landed property—is substantive and tracks the standard Blackstone formulation. Neither Anderson nor Burrill develops this definition independently.
What the historical dictionaries largely omit: the "at large" compound receives no dedicated treatment under this headword in the surveyed sources—it is developed under its own entry in Black's. Researchers should not expect the headword LARGE to carry the full doctrinal weight of "at large" or "in gross" usage.
Jurisdictional Note
Common large as a property right is a concept of English common law origin and has limited practical application in American jurisdictions, most of which have either codified or abolished the old forms of common. The "at large" phrase is universal across American jurisdictions but its legal consequences—particularly in animal law and election law—vary significantly by state statute.