Definition
The formal act of awarding a contract, typically for construction, infrastructure, or public services. When a government body, railroad company, or other undertaking reaches the stage of actual construction or operation, it invites competitive proposals and then awards the work to a selected contractor — that award is the letting out. The term functions as both the process of soliciting bids and the moment of contract execution.
The phrase is most commonly associated with public works contracts — roads, canals, railroads, bridges — and government service contracts such as mail carriage. It captures the transition from planning to procurement: the point at which a project moves from proposal to binding contractual obligation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "let out" — to release, to enlarge, or to emit something.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "To let out" meant to allow to escape or to lease; also used in the sense of disclosing a secret.
The gap is significant. In ordinary English, "letting out" suggests releasing or enlarging something. In legal and commercial usage — particularly in American public works law — it means nearly the opposite of release: it is the act of binding parties together through a contract award. A researcher encountering "letting out" in a 19th-century railroad or canal document should not read it as a lease or a release, but as a procurement action.
Common Confusion
LETTING OUT vs. LEASING: In property law, "letting" alone can mean leasing — granting temporary possession of real property in exchange for rent. "Letting out," as a compound term of art in American commercial law, refers instead to contract procurement, not tenancy. The two uses share a common linguistic ancestor but function in entirely different legal contexts. Historical documents that use "letting" without further specification may require context to determine whether a lease or a contract award is meant.
LETTING OUT vs. LETTING TO FREIGHT: Rapalje & Lawrence flags a related term — "letting to freight" — which appears in charter party law and concerns the engagement of a vessel for cargo transport. This is a distinct legal act from a letting out of a construction contract, though both involve a form of contractual engagement. Researchers working in admiralty or shipping records should not conflate the two.
Why It Matters in Research
The term is distinctively American in its primary legal application. Bouvier's makes this explicit: "In American Law" is the lead phrase, signaling that researchers working in English or other common law sources may not find the same usage. The term flourished in the mid-to-late 19th century alongside the explosion of railroad, canal, and infrastructure development in the United States, making it a frequent fixture in corporate records, legislative documents, government contracts, and litigation arising from construction disputes.
Two research traps are worth noting. First, the term can be confused with property "letting" in the same document set, particularly when a company both leased land and awarded construction contracts. Context — especially the presence of bid notices, competitive proposals, or contractor names — usually resolves the ambiguity. Second, the term largely fell out of standard legal usage in the 20th century, replaced by more precise vocabulary: "contract award," "bid acceptance," "procurement," or "execution of contract." Researchers using keyword searches in historical databases should therefore include "letting out" alongside these modern equivalents when tracing the contractual history of a public works project.
The procedural sequence Bouvier's describes — public notice, proposal period, then the letting out — maps directly onto what modern administrative law calls the competitive bidding process. Researchers studying the origins of public procurement regulation will find "letting out" an essential historical term connecting 19th-century practice to contemporary contracting law.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries align closely. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence offer nearly identical one-sentence definitions, using construction contracts and mail carriage as the canonical examples. Bouvier's is the most expansive and the most useful, situating the term explicitly within American law and describing the procedural mechanics — the notice, the proposal period, and the award — that constitute a letting out in practice.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry contains an apparent editorial artifact: after defining "letting out" and briefly noting "letting to freight," the text shifts abruptly into a discussion of levancy and couchancy (a common law grazing rights doctrine). This is clearly a printing or compilation error in the source and should not be read as connecting those doctrines to the letting out of contracts.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any treatment of the legal consequences of a letting out — what obligations attach to the awarding body, what remedies exist for a disappointed bidder, or how disputes over the award were resolved. Researchers needing that doctrinal depth must move from the dictionary definitions into treatises on public contracts and the case law of the period.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is identified by Bouvier's as distinctly American in its primary legal meaning. English sources use "letting" in the property and charter party sense but do not consistently use "letting out" to mean contract award in the same way. Researchers working across American and English sources from the 19th century should be alert to this divergence.