Desheritaunce

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of cutting someone off from a right to inherit property, land, or title from a family member
2. Archaic term for the depriving of a person's legal right to receive an estate or family inheritance
3. Stripping a rightful heir of their claim to family property, wealth, or hereditary status by legal or personal action

Etymology: Its core is the Latin "heres," meaning "heir." Old French built "desheriter" from "des-," a prefix of reversal, plus "heriter," "to make an heir," so to disinherit someone was literally to undo their heirship. The noun took the French ending "-ance," which Middle English spelled "-aunce," and it names the act of removing someone's right to inherit. This spelling is an obsolete form of "disinheritance." Medieval English legal writing used both spellings, and the variant survives today only in older texts and dictionaries of archaic terms.

Synonyms: disinheritance

Antonyms: inheritance