Infeftment

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The formal act of giving someone legal possession of land or property under the old feudal system in Scotland
2. A legal grant that places a person in feudal ownership of an estate, especially in Scottish law
3. The conferring of heritable title to land by a feudal superior upon a vassal, a practice long used in Scotland

Etymology: "Infeftment" is a Scottish legal term, and its history runs through the feudal system. It is an alternative form of "enfeoffment," meaning the formal act of granting land (a fief) to a vassal, which made the recipient a legal tenant of the grantor. The English "enfeoff" is the verb from which the noun is built, with the suffix "-ment" attached, so "enfeoffment" is the act or process of enfeoffing. The verb traces back through Old French "enfeoffer," built on "fief," the same root that gave English "fee," from a Germanic word for property or livestock. The suffix "-ment" comes from Latin "-mentum," which formed nouns denoting the result or means of an action, and passed into English through Old French "-ment." The word is thus a blend of a Germanic-derived legal core and a Latin-derived suffix, typical of medieval English legal vocabulary.