escheat
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English
Etymology
From Middle English eschete, from Anglo-Norman escheat, Old French eschet, escheit, escheoit (“that which falls to one”), from the past participle of escheoir (“to fall”), from Vulgar Latin *excadēre, from Latin ex + cadere (“fall”).
Pronunciation
Noun
escheat (countable and uncountable, plural escheats)
- (law) The return of property of a deceased person to the state (originally to a feudal lord) where there are no legal heirs or claimants.
- (law) The property so reverted.
- (obsolete) Plunder, booty.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Approching, with bold words and bitter threat, / Bad that same boaster, as he mote, on high / To leaue to him that Lady for excheat, / Or bide him battell without further treat.
- That which falls to one; a reversion or return.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 25:
- And by my ruines thinkes to make them great: / To make one great by others losse, is bad excheat
Quotations
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:escheat.
Translations
Verb
escheat (third-person singular simple present escheats, present participle escheating, simple past and past participle escheated)
- (transitive) To put (land, property) in escheat; to confiscate.
- 2016, Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, Penguin, published 2017, page 329:
- Failure to perform duties opened the culprit to charges of ‘felony’ (felonia), providing grounds for the king to escheat the fief.
- (intransitive) To revert to a state or lord because its previous owner died without an heir.
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