Definition
UTTER has two distinct legal meanings that share no common root in legal usage and must not be conflated.
1. (Criminal law — forgery and counterfeiting) To offer, pass, or attempt to pass a forged instrument, counterfeit currency, or other false document as genuine. The act of uttering is complete upon the offer, regardless of whether the recipient accepts the instrument. It is not necessary that the forgery succeed or that any party be actually deceived. Uttering requires knowledge of the falsity and an intent to defraud; mere possession of a counterfeit instrument, without more, is not uttering.
2. (General legal usage — archaic) Complete, total, or absolute. Appearing primarily in older statutes and equity instruments as an intensifier: "utter bar," "utter disregard," "utterly void." In this sense the word carries no independent substantive legal meaning beyond emphasis.
The criminal law sense (1) is the operative meaning in virtually all modern legal contexts. The adjective sense (2) survives mainly in fixed historical phrases.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To the furthest or most extreme extent; absolute, complete, total, unconditional. Also: to speak aloud; to give audible expression to words or sounds.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Outer; situated on the outside or extreme limit; remote from the center. Also: complete, absolute.
Editorial note: The word "utter" in ordinary English today primarily means either absolute/total (an utter failure) or to speak aloud (he uttered a cry). Neither of these meanings maps cleanly onto the dominant legal sense. In criminal law, uttering is a commercial act — offering an instrument — not a speech act. A researcher unfamiliar with this distinction may incorrectly assume that uttering requires verbal declaration. It does not. Actions alone, such as presenting a document for payment, constitute uttering.
Common Confusion
UTTERING vs. FORGING: These are distinct offenses that frequently travel together but are not the same act. Forging is the making or altering of a false instrument. Uttering is the subsequent act of offering or passing that instrument. A person may forge without uttering (if the document is never offered) and may utter without forging (if they pass a forgery made by another). Many historical statutes bundled them under a single charge — "forge and utter" — which has led to judicial and scholarly conflation. Researchers reading indictments or charging instruments must identify which act, or both, is alleged.
UTTERING vs. PUBLISHING: Historical sources, including Bouvier and Wharton, sometimes pair "utter and publish" as a doublet. In older usage, "publish" reinforced the declaratory aspect — the assertion that the instrument is genuine. Modern statutes typically use "utter" alone and subsume the publishing element within it. When a historical source requires both words to constitute the offense, this signals that the standard was once understood as two-part.
Why It Matters in Research
The criminal law meaning of utter is statute-dependent, and the precise scope of the offense has shifted considerably across time and jurisdiction. Several research traps follow from this.
First, the offer-alone rule is not universal in historical sources. Some early authorities required that the instrument actually be passed or that some reliance occur. Bouvier notes that it is not necessary for the note to be passed to complete the offense, but researchers should not assume that rule applied uniformly in all periods or jurisdictions without checking the governing statute.
Second, the "utter and publish" doublet in older indictments and statutes can create confusion about whether one act or two was required. When reading pre-20th-century criminal law sources, treat this phrase as a formulaic unit and look to the court's analysis of what conduct was actually necessary.
Third, the adjective sense of utter — meaning absolute or complete — appears regularly in equity and contract sources well into the 19th century. "Utterly void" is a term of art in that context and means something different from merely voidable. Researchers scanning historical sources for discussions of forgery and counterfeiting should be alert to the fact that an occurrence of the word "utter" may refer to this entirely different usage.
Fourth, the connection to the evidence law concept of utterance — particularly excited utterance under the hearsay rules — is etymologically and doctrinally separate. The excited utterance exception arises from the speech-act meaning of utter, not the criminal-law commercial meaning. Do not conflate these lines of authority.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the core definition: to utter a forged or counterfeit instrument is to offer it as genuine, and the offer itself completes the offense. Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) draws on Wharton's Criminal Law for the proposition that uttering is a declaration that the instrument is good, accompanied by an intention or offer to pass it. Bouvier adds that even reading a document aloud, if done in a manner that asserts its genuineness, may constitute uttering — an expansive framing not universally adopted.
Rapalje & Lawrence is sparse on uttering as an independent entry, folding it into the treatment of forgery, which signals the historical tendency to treat the two offenses as a unified criminal episode rather than analytically distinct acts.
None of the historical dictionaries engage systematically with the mens rea requirements for uttering — knowledge of falsity and intent to defraud — which are left to treatises and case law. Researchers seeking doctrine on the mental element must look beyond the dictionary shelf to Wharton, Bishop, or jurisdiction-specific sources.
The adjective sense of utter (complete, absolute) is present in Webster's 1913 and in older equity literature but goes largely unaddressed in the law dictionaries, which treat it as self-evident. This creates a gap: a researcher encountering "utter bar" or "utterly void" in a Chancery text will find no systematic dictionary support for how courts interpreted that language.
Jurisdictional Note
The elements of uttering — particularly whether acceptance by the recipient is required and whether the offense merges with forgery for sentencing purposes — vary by statute across U.S. jurisdictions. Federal counterfeiting law (18 U.S.C. § 472) codifies the offer-alone rule explicitly. State formulations differ, and some states have consolidated forgery and uttering into a single offense under modern penal code revisions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
civpro_186: Excited Utterance — Rule 803(2) (Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia)
Note: This entry covers the hearsay exception, not the criminal law offense of uttering. The connection is etymological only. Consult this entry for evidentiary questions involving spontaneous statements; it is not relevant to forgery or counterfeiting research.