Word.ws English Dictionary

appertinence

appertinence is the archaic form of appurtenance.

Meaning of appurtenance

Noun

appurtenance (plural appurtenances)

  1. That which appertains to something else; a belonging, accompaniment, adjunct, appendage, attribute, or accessory ; an addition.
    • Indeed, that was as it should be; for she was only an appurtenance of my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four castors.1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, “[Velay.] .”, in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC, page 17
  2. (in plural) Equipment used for some specific task; gear.
    • Araminta, come I'll talk ſeriouſly to you now, could you but ſee vvith my Eyes the buffoonry of one Scene of Addreſs, a Lover, ſet out with all his Equipage and Appurtenances; […]1693, Will[iam] Congreve, The Old Batchelour, a Comedy. […], London: […] Peter Buck, […], →OCLC, Act II, scene [ii], page 14
  3. A subordinate interest in land which benefits a principal estate, which cannot be detached from or held separately to that estate; an appurtenant interest.
    • It is well settled that a water right may pass with land as an appurtenance thereto, or as a parcel thereof.1908, Samuel Charles Wiel, Water Rights in the Western States, page 340
    Synonyms:
    contenement
  4. A modifier that is appended or prepended to another word to coin a new word that expresses belonging.
  5. The state or quality of being an appurtenance.
    • Thus, these two characteristics — appurtenance and the lack of need for any act of acquisition - go together and depend upon each other; one is merely looking at different facets of the same thing.1970, United States. Congress. Senate. Interior and Insular Affairs, Outer Continental Shelf, page 275

Forms of appertinence

pluralappertinences

Questions about appertinence

What is appertinence the archaic form of?
Appertinence is the archaic form of appurtenance.

Words near appertinence in the dictionary

  1. appertainment
  2. appertainments
  3. appertains
  4. appertinance
  5. appertinances
  6. appertinence
  7. appertinences
  8. appertinent
  9. appertinents
  10. appertisation
  11. apperture

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: appertinence (page history and authors); appurtenance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “appertinence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/appertinence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.