entail
/ɛnˈteɪl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.21 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To settle or fix inalienably on a person or thing, or on a person and his descendants or a certain line of descendants; -- said especially of an estate; to bestow as a heritage.
Transitive verb
noun
That which is entailed.
noun
That which is entailed.
noun
That which is entailed.
Example Sentences
- "This activity will entail careful attention to detail."
- "What mattered to Hegel, and now Leach, is a presupposedly, historically necessary evolution in the structure of political power, entailing the creation of new classes of powerless victims to be sacrificed on the altar of abstract ideological concepts (i.e., “choice”)."
- "God's immateriality entails the divine attribute of incorporeality, that God is neither a body nor embodied."
- "It also entailed well-documented disadvantages: a population increase in an unsustaining economy, a battered self-identity, a plague of substance abuse."
- "Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and their mother's fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply the deficiency of his."
- "1754-1762, David Hume, The History of England Allowing them to entail their estates."
Etymology
From Middle English entaillen, from Old French entaillier, entailler (“to notch”, literally “to cut in”); from prefix en- + tailler (“to cut”), from Late Latin taliare, from Latin talea. Compare late Latin feudum talliatum (“a fee entailed, i.e., curtailed or limited”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɛnˈteɪl/
- British English: /ɛnˈteɪl/