Wills

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /wɪlz/

Definitions

1. A series of legal documents that designate the allocation of belongings after one's passing
2. Documents written to specify how a person's property and possessions should be distributed when they die ; the faculty by which a person chooses or decides actions or beliefs
3. Written instructions detailing how belongings are to be handled post-mortem ; a person's capacity to form intentions and control actions

Etymology: The noun "will" in the sense of a person's capacity to form intentions comes from an Old English word, "willa", meaning desire or wish, which shares a root with the verb "to will" (to want, to wish). That root has a surprisingly wide reach: the same ancestral idea of choosing or wishing lies behind the Latin "velle" (to wish) and "voluntas", as well as Russian "volya", which means both freedom and will. The English noun and the verb developed from the same wanting, so it is no accident that one word can mean both a testament and a faculty of choice. "Wills" is the third-person singular present form of the verb "will", used with a subject such as "he" or "she", as in "she wills it." As a noun, the plural "wills" refers to multiple written documents of the testamentary kind, or to multiple instances of the faculty of volition.

Synonyms: testaments, documents

Antonyms: disinheritance