escheat

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 *excadō, from Latin ex + cadō (“I fall”).

• IPA^(key): /əˈst͡ʃit/

escheat (countable and uncountable, plural escheats)

1. (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.
2. (law) The property so reverted.
3. (obsolete) Plunder, booty.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.viii:

     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.

4. That which falls to one; a reversion or return.
   • Spenser

     To make me great by others' loss is bad escheat.

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:escheat.

escheat (third-person singular simple present escheats, present participle escheating, simple past and past participle escheated)

1. (transitive) To put (land, property) in escheat; to confiscate.
   • 2016, Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, Penguin 2017, p. 329:

     Failure to perform duties opened the culprit to charges of ‘felony’ (felonia), providing grounds for the king to escheat the fief.

2. (intransitive) To revert to a state or lord because its previous owner died without an heir.

• escheator
• escheatment

• ceaseth, cheetas, teaches