entail
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɛnˈteɪl/
ipa: /ɪnˈteɪl/
ipa: /ənˈteɪl/
rhymes: -eɪl
Forms: form: entails
form: entailing
form: entailed
form: entailed
form: intail
Etymology: From Middle English entaillen, from Old French entaillier, entailler (“to notch”, literally “to cut in”); from prefix en- + tailler (“to cut”), from Late Latin taliare, from Latin talea. Compare late Latin feudum talliatum (“a fee entailed, i.e., curtailed or limited”).
Senses: examples: text: This activity will entail careful attention to detail.
text: What mattered to Hegel, and now Leach, is a presupposedly, historically necessary evolution in the structure of political power, entailing the creation of new classes of powerless victims to be sacrificed on the altar of abstract ideological concepts (i.e., “choice”).
ref: 1997 April 12, Richard Ring, “Secular, abortion-believers are the bloodiest lot”, in The Daily News, page A11:
text: God's immateriality entails the divine attribute of incorporeality, that God is neither a body nor embodied.
ref: 2003, James Porter Moreland, William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, →ISBN, page 507:
text: It also entailed well-documented disadvantages: a population increase in an unsustaining economy, a battered self-identity, a plague of substance abuse.
ref: 2009 July 24, Holland Cotter, “Postcards From Canada’s ‘New North’”, in The New York Times:
glosses: To imply, require, or invoke.
examples: text: Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and their mother's fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply the deficiency of his.
ref: 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter VII, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 50:
text: 1754-1762, David Hume, The History of England
Allowing them to entail their estates.
text: I here entail The crown to thee and to thine heirs forever.
ref: c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
text: Apparently, Henry VII visited the city [Bristol] in 1487, "taking care to entail a sumptuary fine on the citizens because their wives dressed too gaudily".
ref: 2023 January 11, Stephen Roberts, “Bradshaw's Britain: castles and cathedrals”, in RAIL, number 974, page 55:
glosses: To settle or fix inalienably on a person or thing, or on a person and his descendants or a certain line of descendants; -- said especially of an estate; to bestow as a heritage.
examples: text: To entail him and his heirs unto the crown.
ref: c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
glosses: To appoint hereditary possessor.
examples: text: All bard with golden bendes, which were entayld / With curious antickes
ref: 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 27:
glosses: To cut or carve in an ornamental way.
Derived terms: disentail
entailable
entailer
entailment