Definition
"Lying" appears in legal sources primarily as a component of compound phrases rather than as a standalone legal term. Its legal significance arises in three distinct contexts:
1. Lying in wait. Conduct involving concealment, watching, and waiting with the purpose of attacking or killing another person. The phrase carries specific doctrinal weight in criminal law, where it has long served as evidence of the premeditation and deliberation that elevate homicide to murder in the first degree. Critically, lying in wait is not synonymous with mere concealment — it implies an active posture of surveillance and readiness combined with secrecy of purpose.
2. Lying at wharf. A term of maritime and commercial usage describing a vessel floating in the water space of a dock. Relevant to questions of delivery, risk of loss, and insurance coverage in historic shipping contracts and cargo disputes.
3. Lying (as a general act). The making of a false statement, whether or not the speaker knows it to be false. In this sense, Bouvier distinguishes lying from deceit: every deceit contains a lie, but deceit is the broader concept because it adds the purposeful intent to mislead. A lie may be innocent of legal consequence; deceit, in its technical sense, typically is not.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "lie," meaning to rest in a horizontal position.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Of "lie," to tell a falsehood.
The term presents a compounded ambiguity in legal research. In ordinary English, "lying" most naturally evokes the act of telling a falsehood (Webster's sense), but Wiktionary's primary entry anchors it to physical recumbency. Legal sources exploit both roots simultaneously: "lying in wait" draws on the physical posture (reclining, positioned, at rest in concealment), while Bouvier's treatment of "lying" as false speech draws on the moral and communicative sense. A researcher scanning historical indices must determine which root governs — context will not always make this obvious.
Common Confusion
Lying vs. Deceit vs. Perjury vs. Fraud. These four concepts share a common element — the false statement — but carry sharply different legal consequences and elements. Lying (the bare act) carries no inherent legal sanction. Deceit adds the element of intent to mislead and the causing of harm, making it actionable. Perjury requires a false statement made under oath in a judicial proceeding with knowledge of its falsity. Fraud adds the requirement that the false statement induce detrimental reliance. Researchers finding "lying" in historical sources should not assume the source intends any of these more specific doctrinal terms.
Lying in wait vs. Concealment. Anderson's is explicit: the two are not synonymous. Concealment alone may satisfy elements of other offenses but does not, by itself, establish the deliberation required for first-degree murder under the lying-in-wait doctrine.
Why It Matters in Research
The term is a navigational hazard in historical indices and digests. "Lying" in older sources will often be a cross-reference stub directing the reader to "Lie" or to one of the compound phrases, rather than a substantive entry in its own right. Researchers who stop at "lying" without following the directive to "see LIE" will miss the full doctrinal landscape.
The lying-in-wait doctrine is the most legally consequential of the three meanings and the one most likely to generate case law. Its significance has shifted across jurisdictions and eras: in early common law it was one of several factors indicating premeditation; in many American statutory schemes it was eventually codified as an explicit aggravating factor or a definitional element of first-degree murder. Researchers working with pre-statutory criminal law materials should be alert to the fact that "lying in wait" operated as a common law concept before it was codified, and its precise meaning may vary across decisions.
The maritime usage (lying at wharf) will appear almost exclusively in admiralty and commercial shipping sources. It is effectively obsolete in modern legal writing but resurfaces in historical contract and insurance disputes where the physical location of a vessel at the time of a casualty determined coverage or liability.
Bouvier's treatment of lying as a general act — knowingly or unknowingly false — is broader than most modern treatments would permit without further qualification. Modern legal systems rarely attach consequences to mere false statements absent some additional element (oath, intent, reliance, harm). Researchers reading Bouvier's definition into modern doctrine should not carry that breadth forward without verification.
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson and Bouvier approach "lying" from different angles, and neither entry is fully self-contained. Anderson treats "lying" as a cross-reference to compound phrases, with substantive content concentrated in "lying in wait" and "lying at wharf." Bouvier gives a short but theoretically important treatment of lying as a species of false speech, positioning it in relation to deceit and directing readers to those entries.
The two sources agree implicitly that "lying" without a modifier has limited independent legal force. Neither dictionary frames lying alone as a tort or crime. The meaningful legal weight resides in the compound forms.
Bouvier's observation — "every deceit comprehends a lie, but a deceit is more than a lie" — reflects a classical common law hierarchy that remains conceptually accurate even if modern doctrine has reorganized the categories. This formulation is useful in historical research for understanding how courts and commentators situated the moral and legal wrongfulness of false statements along a spectrum.
Neither source addresses perjury or fraud under this heading, confirming that "lying" in historical legal usage was a general descriptive term, not a technical one with its own elements or remedies.
Jurisdictional Note
The lying-in-wait doctrine varies significantly by jurisdiction in its modern statutory form. Some states have codified it as a specific enumerated basis for first-degree murder; others treat it as evidence of premeditation without independent definitional weight. Researchers should not assume that historical common law formulations of lying in wait map directly onto any particular state's current statutory language.