Infeft

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. In Scots law, to formally give a person legal possession of heritable property through a feudal title
2. To invest someone with the feudal right to hold land, completing their legal ownership under Scottish law
3. Scottish legal term meaning to put a person into formal possession of a piece of land or estate

Etymology: "Infeft" is an obsolete form of "enfeoff", a word for formally granting land or rights under the feudal system. The prefix "en-" means "in" or "into", and the core is "fief", an estate held from a superior on condition of providing military service. The "fief" element is ultimately traceable to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning livestock, especially sheep or cattle, which hints at how wealth was once measured. The word came into English through Late Middle English "enfeffen" and "enfeoffen", borrowed from Old French "enfeffer" and "enfieffer". Medieval Latin writers had their own version, "infeoffāre", and Anglo-Norman had "enfeoffer", so the term was shared across the legal worlds of England and France. The "infeft" spelling is the one that stuck around in Scotland's legal usage, where the older form survived in the sense of formally giving someone possession of land. Its meaning stayed tied to that legal act of transferring an estate rather than drifting into everyday speech.

Synonyms: invest, enfeoff