Definition
To acquire; to get possession of through effort or action. In legal usage, "obtain" most commonly describes the act of gaining something — property, money, a benefit, or a legal instrument — and carries an implicit requirement that the acquisition be the result of some affirmative conduct by the person obtaining it. The word appears across many areas of law but is most frequently encountered in criminal statutes, particularly those prohibiting the obtaining of money or property by false pretenses, and in procedural contexts where a party must take steps to secure a court order, license, or other legal entitlement.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To get hold of; to gain possession of, to procure; to acquire, in any way. Also: to prevail or succeed; to hold true or be in force.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To get hold of by effort; to gain possession of; to procure; to acquire, in any way. An older sense — to hold, keep, or possess — is marked obsolete.
The gap worth noting: In ordinary English, "obtain" can mean simply to possess or for a condition to prevail ("that rule no longer obtains"). In legal texts, neither of these senses is operative. Legal usage locks the word to active acquisition — the gaining of something through conduct. When a statute requires that a defendant "obtain" property, courts focus on the moment and method of acquisition, not mere possession. Researchers encountering "obtain" in historical legal documents should not import the obsolete possessory sense or the intransitive sense.
Common Confusion
"Obtain" is sometimes conflated with "receive" or "possess" in criminal law analysis, but the terms are legally distinct. "Receive" (as in receiving stolen property) typically requires knowledge at the time of acquisition but does not demand active procurement. "Possess" describes a static relationship with an object. "Obtain" implies active effort directed at acquisition. This distinction matters most in fraud and theft statutes, where the specific verb used by the legislature can determine which offense is charged and what the prosecution must prove about the defendant's conduct.
Why It Matters in Research
The word "obtain" is a statutory term of art whose meaning is almost always context-dependent. Several research traps arise:
First, the criminal law context is where "obtain" does the heaviest lifting. Statutes prohibiting obtaining property by false pretenses, obtaining a signature by fraud, or obtaining a controlled substance by deception each use the word in slightly different ways. Anderson's note — that in false pretenses statutes "obtain" may refer to obtaining some benefit to the party rather than strictly depriving another of property — is an important historical signal. Researchers working with older indictments or appellate records should check whether the jurisdiction followed a benefit-to-defendant reading or a deprivation-of-victim reading, because this affected what the prosecution had to prove.
Second, in procedural contexts — obtaining a warrant, obtaining a protective order, obtaining an injunction — "obtain" describes the process of making application and receiving judicial authorization. These uses are procedurally governed and carry their own requirements entirely separate from the substantive criminal usage.
Third, in older sources, be alert to the intransitive English sense ("the custom obtains") appearing in legal prose. This is not the operative legal definition; it is a stylistic usage meaning "this rule is in effect." Researchers scanning historical treatises or judicial opinions for the legal definition of "obtain" should filter out this usage.
Fourth, corpus connections: "Obtain" links to false pretenses, fraud, larceny by trick, and theft statutes throughout the criminal law materials. In family law, it appears in the procedural context of protective orders. In administrative law, it appears in licensing and permitting frameworks. The word itself is not jurisdiction-specific, but the statutes that deploy it are — always locate the governing statute and any judicial construction of that statute's particular use of the word.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) defines "obtain" as "to acquire; to get hold of by effort; to get and retain possession of," illustrating it almost exclusively with the false pretenses context. Black's emphasis on effort and retention reflects the dominant criminal law usage of the period.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law adds a nuance that Black's underplays: in false pretenses statutes specifically, "obtain" may be satisfied by the defendant gaining some benefit, without requiring that the victim be entirely deprived of their property. This is a meaningful doctrinal note for researchers working with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century criminal records, where the sufficiency of an indictment often turned on how narrowly the court construed the obtaining element.
Both dictionaries treat "obtain" as an active-acquisition word, consistent with each other and with the dominant judicial construction. Neither dictionary addresses the modern statutory proliferation in which "obtain" appears in regulatory, administrative, and family law contexts — areas where researchers must supply the contextual gloss themselves.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia: Domestic Violence — Procedure for Obtaining and Contesting Protective Orders