escheat

1. 1.

   a reversion to the state (as the ultimate owner of property) in the absence of legal heirs

   Broaderreversion

   law

2. 2.

   the property that reverts to the state

   Broadertransferred property

Other forms of escheat

plural

escheats·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about escheat

What does escheat mean?

escheat means "a reversion to the state (as the ultimate owner of property) in the absence of legal heirs". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in escheat?

escheat has 3 syllables: e-sche-at. The stress falls on "e".

Is escheat a common word?

escheat is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.