Alienability

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The property characteristic that permits legal transferability or assignment is known as the ability to have rights sold or reassigned, which defines ownership that can change hands
2. The quality of an item or right that allows it to be legally sold or given to another party
3. A legal ability enabling an asset or property to change ownership through sale or assignment

Etymology: "Alienability" is formed from "alien" plus the suffix "-ability," and the suffix carries most of the history. "Alien" in this sense means "to make something belong to another," a legal idea descending from Latin "alienare," "to transfer to another owner." The suffix comes down through a long chain: a Proto-Indo-European adjectival element passed into Italic and then Latin as "-bilis," meaning "capable of being" something, and Latin "-abilitas" was built from it to name the quality of being capable of that action. Middle French then adopted the pattern as "-ablete," which entered Middle English as "-ablete" before becoming the modern English "-ability." The result is a compound that reads almost like a plain instruction: an alienable thing is one that can be handed over to someone else. Lawyers and economists use the term most, often to describe whether property, land, or rights can legally pass from one person to another. The root word "alien" is itself the older and more surprising part, since in its legal sense it has nothing to do with foreigners or outer space.