Definition
A term of art in common-law pleading used to allege that a defendant acted with knowledge of a particular fact or condition — typically a dangerous, defective, or wrongful state of affairs — at the time the defendant committed the act complained of. "Well knowing" is the traditional formulaic phrase used to plead scienter, meaning that the defendant knew the relevant facts and cannot claim ignorance as a defense.
In practice, the phrase appears in declarations where the plaintiff must establish not merely that harm occurred, but that the defendant was aware of the circumstances that made the act dangerous or wrongful. A typical use: "the defendant, well knowing that the said animal was accustomed to bite," followed by the allegation that the defendant nonetheless permitted the animal to be at large. The phrase does the work of connecting the defendant's state of mind to the actionable wrong.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Well knowing" appears in ordinary English as an adverbial phrase meaning simply "with full awareness" or "being fully aware of." It carries a slightly formal or literary register but is otherwise unremarkable.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's does not treat "well knowing" as a distinct entry, but the construction would be understood as an intensified form of "knowing" — aware, informed, cognizant.
The gap between common and legal meaning is not one of contradiction but of function. In ordinary speech, "well knowing" describes a mental state. In pleading, it is a term of art that performs a legal task: it formally alleges scienter as an element of the cause of action. Dropping the phrase from a pleading, or substituting a paraphrase, could in the common-law technical tradition leave the declaration defective for failure to properly lay the scienter.
Common Confusion
"Well knowing" is sometimes loosely equated with general allegations of bad faith or willful conduct. These are distinct. Scienter, as pleaded through "well knowing," concerns the defendant's awareness of a specific fact — a vicious animal's propensity, a defective condition, a prior wrong — not a generalized allegation of malice or intent to harm. Confusion also arises with "knowingly" as used in modern criminal statutes, which carries a defined mental-state meaning under codes such as the Model Penal Code. The common-law pleading formula and the modern statutory mens rea concept are related in spirit but different in form, context, and legal effect.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with common-law pleading materials — especially pre-code declarations in tort and nuisance actions — will encounter "well knowing" as a nearly invisible but functionally critical phrase. Its absence from a declaration, or its placement in the wrong sequence, was historically grounds for challenge. Understanding that the phrase is doing the work of scienter-pleading helps researchers parse what the plaintiff was actually required to prove versus what was treated as a formal requirement of the pleading itself.
For historical research, the phrase appears most prominently in actions involving animals (the classic "scienter action" for dangerous animals), nuisance, and defective conditions on land. It also appears in fraud-adjacent pleadings where the defendant's prior knowledge of falsity needed to be formally alleged.
Modern codes of civil procedure (beginning with the Field Code of 1848 and continuing through the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) abolished the technical requirement of formulaic scienter pleading. Researchers should not expect to find "well knowing" in modern federal or most state pleadings — its disappearance is itself historically informative. However, courts in the post-code era still require adequate allegations of knowledge or scienter as a substantive matter; the form changed even though the underlying requirement did not entirely vanish.
Trap for the historical researcher: the Bouvier entry is incomplete as preserved — the definition cuts off mid-sentence ("the def"). This is a known truncation in some editions of Bouvier. Do not treat the entry as exhaustive; cross-reference with primary sources and treatises on common-law pleading for the full formula.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's agree on the core function: "well knowing" is the technical phrase for laying a scienter in pleading. Black's states this concisely and cross-references scienter directly. Bouvier's provides more context, situating the phrase in the category of pleadings for injuries that are not immediate-and-with-force (i.e., trespass on the case rather than trespass), and noting that both the injury and the circumstances must be stated. This distinction is important: "well knowing" is particularly associated with case actions, where the defendant's prior knowledge of the dangerous condition is an element of the wrong itself, not an aggravating circumstance.
Both sources treat the phrase as a term of pleading art rather than a substantive legal standard in its own right. Neither source fully addresses the transition away from the formula under code pleading — an expected gap given the dates of these dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
"Well knowing" as a formal pleading phrase is largely a feature of common-law jurisdictions that retained technical pleading rules. Its use and significance varied by jurisdiction and era. In jurisdictions that early adopted notice or fact pleading, the phrase became obsolete sooner. Courts interpreting older instruments, deeds, or historical pleadings may still need to interpret the phrase according to its common-law technical meaning.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
For the mental-state dimension of "knowing" in modern criminal procedure context, see: Miranda — Waiver (Knowing, Voluntary, and Intelligent), The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia.
For the pleading framework in which scienter allegations operate in federal court today, see: Federal Question Jurisdiction — 28 USC 1331 and the Well-Pleaded Complaint Rule, The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia.