Definition
To transfer personal property to another by means of a will or testament. Bequeath is the operative verb for testamentary gifts of personalty; the corresponding noun is bequest. It is distinguished from devise, which traditionally applies to gifts of real property, though courts have construed bequeath to pass real estate when the testator's intent clearly requires it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To give or leave by will; to give by testament. Also, more broadly, to hand down or transmit anything to a successor.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To give or leave by will, said especially of personal property. Also used figuratively — to hand down knowledge, legacy, or tradition to posterity.
The common and legal meanings are close but not identical in a way that matters for research. Ordinary usage treats bequeath as a general synonym for any testamentary gift, whether of land or personal property. Legal usage is more precise: bequeath is technically limited to personalty, with devise reserved for realty. A testator who uses bequeath loosely in a will — as many do — can create interpretive questions that courts must resolve by examining context and intent.
Common Confusion
BEQUEATH vs. DEVISE: These two terms divide testamentary gifts by the nature of the property conveyed. Bequeath applies to personal property; devise applies to real property. The distinction was historically strict and tracks the bifurcation of property law between personalty and realty. In practice, testators frequently use bequeath (or the phrase give, devise, and bequeath) without regard to the property type, and courts have repeatedly held that bequeath may be construed to pass real estate when the surrounding language establishes that intent. The confusion is compounded by modern will-drafting conventions that often use all three words together as a catch-all, reducing the technical distinction to a historical artifact in many instruments.
BEQUEATH vs. BEQUEST: Bequeath is the verb — the act. Bequest is the noun — the gift itself, or the clause in the instrument making the gift. Researchers encountering either term in historical sources should confirm which form is used and whether the source treats them as interchangeable (many do).
Why It Matters in Research
The personal property / real property divide is the central research trap here. In sources predating the twentieth century, the distinction between bequeath and devise was treated as a hard rule of construction, not merely a drafting preference. A researcher reading a will contest, an intestacy dispute, or a treatise on testamentary law from the nineteenth century must understand that courts took the classification seriously — a gift "bequeathed" might be held not to pass land even where the testator clearly intended it to, absent supporting context. The cases cited across the historical dictionaries (particularly Dow v. Dow, 36 Me. 216, and the Massachusetts and New York authorities) reflect the tension between strict construction and intent-based interpretation.
For corpus researchers, note that the phrase give, devise, and bequeath appears with high frequency in form books and actual instruments from the eighteenth century onward. This triple formulation was designed precisely to avoid the personal/real property ambiguity. When searching historical sources, researchers should query all three terms together and separately, as their distribution across a document may signal drafting sophistication or its absence.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry in the source material contains a clerical error — the text provided concerns benefit of clergy, not bequeath. Researchers relying on that dictionary for this term should treat it as a gap in the record.
Jurisdictional variation matters less for the definition of bequeath than for what it can validly accomplish. States with specific statutory requirements for will execution, or those that have enacted versions of the Uniform Probate Code, govern what a bequest can transfer and under what conditions — but the word bequeath retains its core personal property meaning across American jurisdictions.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on a single core definition: bequeath is the proper term for testamentary gifts of personal property. Black's (both editions), Bouvier's, Burrill's, and Anderson's all state this consistently. The variation across sources lies in how they handle the deviation — that is, how they address wills in which bequeath is used to convey real property.
Burrill's is the most precise on drafting practice, noting that "give and bequeath" is the appropriate formula for personalty, while "give and devise" is used for realty, but acknowledging that context can override the technical meaning. Black's second edition is the most explicit on the interpretive rule: bequeath is the proper term for personalty, but if the testator's intent to pass real property is clear from context, courts will give effect to that intent. Bouvier adds the Massachusetts authority (119 Mass. 525) and the formulation "devise and bequeath" as a hybrid construction courts have accepted.
Anderson's is notably concise and treats bequest as the noun form in the same entry, a useful structural shortcut that the other sources handle separately.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the twentieth-century trend toward treating bequeath as effectively synonymous with devise in jurisdictions that have abolished or softened the real/personal property distinction in probate law, and the influence of the Uniform Probate Code on modernizing will construction standards.
Jurisdictional Note
The strict personal property limitation on bequeath has been softened or effectively abolished in many states through probate code reform and liberal construction statutes that direct courts to give effect to testamentary intent regardless of technical word choice. Researchers working with wills from code-reform jurisdictions should not assume historical case law on the bequeath/devise distinction controls the outcome.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Wills and Testamentary Instruments; Personal Property; Devise and Bequest.