Word of the Day: Entail

entail en-tail / ĕn-tāl, ĭn-tāl   noun 1. predetermined order of succession He saw the fertile fields of New England proportioned out among a few great landholders, and descending by entail from generation to generation. From “Grandfather’s Chair” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804 – 1864   2. the act of restricting an inheritance to the owner’s lineal descendants, particularly involving property I’d have you to remember, sir, my property’s got no entail on it;–since my grandfather’s time the Casses can do as they like with their land. From “Silas Marner” by George Eliot, pen name of Mary Anne Evans, 1819 – 1880   3. something, such as an estate, that is restricted by a predetermined order of succession Their oldest brother, Francisco de Ovando Paredes, inherited the entail but died without heirs, so that first Cosme and then Cristrbal inherited the entail. From “Emigrants and Society: An Approach to the Background of Colonial Spanish America” by Ida Altman, 1950 –   4. the conveyance of something to others as though it was an unchangeable and unavoidable inheritance By the entrance of sin, and the entail of the curse for sin, our condition has become very miserable: our whole life is spent in labour, and our time filled up with continual toil. www.biblegateway.com/resources/matthew-henry/Gen.5.28-Gen.5.32, accessed February 9, 2023   verb 1. to cause property in an estate to be passed to a designated line of heirs, so that subsequent possessors can not change the beneficiary De Courcy’s arrival, and I advise you by all means to marry him; his father’s estate is, we know, considerable, and I believe certainly entailed. From “Lady Susan” by Jane Austen, 1775 – 1817   2. to cause something to be conferred to a line of successors Learning by study must be won; ‘Twas ne’er entail’d from son to son. John Gay, 1685 – 1732   3. to have as a necessary consequence If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails. Leo F. Buscaglia, 1924 – 1998