Word of the Week

Escheat

The forfeiture of property to the State when no other person has a rightful claim to the property. English lawyers took the word from the Old French eschete, which meant "inheritance" (because if the landowner had no rightful heirs, then the Crown would "inherit" the land). Over time, escheat became an English word, cheat, which degenerated into a general term of abuse. So the law stuck to the traditional French spelling, while cheat has become a legal word in its own right, as a synonym for fraud (see Black's Law Dictionary).