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legacy

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈleɡ.ə.si/[1]

Etymology

It is Middle English legacie, borrowed from Old French legacie,[2][3][4] from Medieval Latin lēgātia (“legateship”),[2][3] from Latin lēgātus (“envoy, deputy”), the past participle of lēgāre (“to send as deputy; to bequeath by will”).[5][2][6] The sense of a bequest was also shaped by Anglo-Latin lēgantia, from lēgāre in its sense “to bequeath”.[3][7] It is a doublet in origin of legate.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The office or function of a deputy, especially of a papal legate: 1382 in the OED, about 1384 in Barnhart, in the Wycliffe Bible.[8][2] A body of people sent on a mission is from about 1375.[8]

Semantic evolution

The legate's office gave way to the sense of a gift left by will, which appeared in Scottish about 1460.[5][2][8] The act of bequeathing is from 1494, and the figurative sense, anything handed down from an ancestor or predecessor, from about 1586.[8] Trench noted that the old sense of an embassy survived in the Rheims New Testament (1582), where the king “sendeth a legacie”.[9] Legacy-hunter is from the 1690s.[5] The computing sense, of old systems or software still in use, is a modern addition: MWU dates a sense to 1989.[4][10]

Timeline

  • c. 1375 – a body of envoys.[8]
  • 1382 – the office of a deputy or legate.[8]
  • c. 1460 – a bequest (Scottish).[8][2]
  • 1494 – the act of bequeathing.[8]
  • c. 1586 – something handed down.[8]
  • 1690s – legacy-hunter.[5]
  • 1989 – a newer sense, in MWU.[4]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. Money or property left to someone by will; a bequest.
  2. Something handed down from an ancestor, a predecessor or the past.

Adjective

  1. (computing) Of hardware or software: old but still in use.
  • legate
  • legation
  • delegate

Usage notes

In Scots, legacy was also a verb meaning to bequeath.[11][7]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker
  10. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  11. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)