entail

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To have, impose, or require as a necessary accompaniment or consequence: The investment entailed a high risk. The proposition X is a rose entails the proposition X is a flower because all roses are flowers.
2. v. To limit the inheritance of (property) to a specified succession of heirs.
3. v. To bestow or impose on a person or a specified succession of heirs.
4. n. The act of entailing, especially property.
5. n. The state of being entailed.
6. n. An entailed estate.
7. n. A predetermined order of succession, as to an estate or to an office.
8. n. Something transmitted as if by unalterable inheritance.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To cut; carve for ornament.
2. In law, to limit and restrict the descent of (lands and tenements) by gift to a man and to a specified line of heirs, by settlement in such wise that neither the donee nor any subsequent possessor can alienate or bequeath it: as, to entail a manor to A. B. and to his eldest son, or to his heirs of his body begotten, or to his heirs by a particular wife. See entail, n., 3.
3. Hence To fix inalienably on a person or thing, or on a person and his descendants; transmit in an unalterable course; devolve as an unavoidable consequence.
4. To bring about; cause to ensue or accrue; induce; involve or draw after itself.
5. n. . Engraved or carved work; intaglio; inlay.
6. n. Shape; that which is carved or shaped.
7. n. In law: The limitation of land to certain members of a particular family or line of descent; a prescribed order of successive inheritances, voluntarily created, to keep land in the family undivided; the rule of descent settled for an estate.
8. n. An estate entailed or limited to particular heirs; an estate given to a man and his heirs. The word is now, however, often loosely used, since strict entails are obsolete, to indicate the giving of property to one or to two successively for life with suspension of power of alienation meanwhile. By early English law, as fully established under the Norman conquest, a feoffment or grant of land to “A and the heirs of his body” created an entail, so that neither A nor any successive heir taking under the grant could alien the land; and if the line of heirs failed, the land reverted to the lord who made the grant, or his heirs. In course of time the inconveniences of the restriction on alienation led the courts to hold that such a gift must be understood not as a gift to the heirs after A, but to A on condition that he should have heirs; in other words, that the heirs could not claim as donees under the feoffment, but only as heirs under A, and that hence A took a fee, which, if he had heirs of his body, became absolute, and enabled him to alien the land. This practical abolition of entails by the courts was followed by the statute of Westminster of 1285, known as the statute de Donis Conditionalibus, which enacted that the will of the donor in such gifts according to the form manifestly expressed should be observed, so that such a grantee should have no power to alien. Under this act, which reestablished entails, a large part of the land in England was fettered by such grants. The courts, still disfavoring entails, termed the estate thus granted a fee tail (see tail), and sustained alienations by the tenant in tall, subject, however, to the right of the heirs in tail, or, if none, of the lord, to enter on the death of the tenant who had conveyed. (See base fee, under fee.) They subsequently also sanctioned absolute alienations by allowing the tenant in tail to have an action brought against him in which he collusively suffered the plaintiff to recover the land. (See fine, recovery, and Taltarum's case, under case.) In 1833 a direct deed was substituted by statute for this fiction. The object of entails is now, to some extent, secured by family or marriage settlements, which are often, but inaccurately, spoken of as if effecting entails. In most if not all of the United States, and in Canada, entails have been abolished, either as in England or by statutes declaring that words which would formerly create an entail create a fee simple, or, as in some States, a life estate with remainder in fee simple to heirs.

Wiktionary

1. n. That which is entailed. Hence:
2. n. obsolete Delicately carved ornamental work; intaglio.
3. v. transitive To imply or require.
4. v. transitive 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.
5. v. transitive (obsolete) To appoint hereditary possessor.
6. v. transitive (obsolete) To cut or carve in an ornamental way.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Law) That which is entailed.
2. n. An estate in fee entailed, or limited in descent to a particular class of issue.
3. n. The rule by which the descent is fixed.
4. n. obsolete Delicately carved ornamental work; intaglio.
5. v. 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 an heritage.
6. v. obsolete To appoint hereditary possessor.
7. v. obsolete To cut or carve in an ornamental way.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. have as a logical consequence
2. n. the act of entailing property; the creation of a fee tail from a fee simple
3. v. limit the inheritance of property to a specific class of heirs
4. n. land received by fee tail
5. v. impose, involve, or imply as a necessary accompaniment or result