Word.ws English Dictionary

bequest

/bɪˈkwɛst/

bequest noun: the act of bequeathing or leaving by will.

Noun

bequest (plural bequests)

  1. The act of bequeathing or leaving by will.
  2. The transfer of property upon the owner's death according to the will of the deceased.
    • 2006 SHERRY CLODMAN & EDWARD H. PEARCE: Well Advised. p.25 Civil Sector Press →ISBN
      A specific bequest is the gift of a specific sum of money, or the gift of a specific property or a particular asset. Perhaps the most common type of bequest, and undoubtedly the most certain, it is the first to be...
  3. That which is left by will; a legacy.
  4. That which has been handed down or transmitted.
    • Yet some odor of religion is still lingering here, the bequest of pious souls, who had grace to enjoy a foretaste of immortal life.1846, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The New Adam and Eve”, in Mosses from an Old Manse
  5. A person's inheritance; an amount of property given by will.

Verb

bequest (third-person singular simple present bequests, present participle bequesting, simple past and past participle bequested)

  1. (transitive) To give as a bequest; bequeath.

bequest meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

bequest in Tamil

விருப்புறுதி, மேலும் நன்றாக உயில்வழிக் கொடை

bequest in Urdu

to bequest, request; to utter, say graciously
فرمانا farmānā

bequest in Bengali

উইল দ্বারা দান, উইলকৃত সম্পত্তি, উত্তরাধিকারসূত্রে প্রাপ্ত উপহার

bequest in Malayalam

inheritance, legacy, endowment
മരണപത്രികയാലുള്ള ദാനം, മരണശാനദാനം, ദാനം ചെയ്യപ്പെടുന്ന സ്വത്ത്, ദാനം, ഒസ്യത്ത്, മരണപത്രപ്രകാരം നൽകപ്പെട്ട സ്വത്ത്
More languagesFewer languages
bequest in Kannada
ಉಯಿಲು ಕೊಡುಗೆ

Synonyms of bequest

Forms of bequest

Noun
pluralbequests
Verb
third-person singular presentbequests
present participlebequesting
past participlebequested
pastbequested

Plural of bequest: bequests

Origin of bequest

From Middle English biqueste, bequeste (“will, testament, bequest”), from be- + quiste, queste (“saying, utterance, testament, will, legacy”), from Old English *cwist, *cwiss (“saying”) (compare Old English andcwiss, ġecwis, uncwisse, etc.), from Proto-Germanic *kwissiz (“saying”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷet- (“to say”). Related to Old English andcwiss (“answer, reply”), Old English uncwisse (“dumb, mute”), Middle English bequethen (“to bequeath”). Not related to quest, which is from Latin. More at quoth, bequeath.

From Middle English biquesten, from the noun (see above).

Words that rhyme with bequest

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bequest

What does bequest mean?
Bequest means the act of bequeathing or leaving by will.
What is bequest in Tamil?
Bequest in Tamil is விருப்புறுதி, மேலும் நன்றாக உயில்வழிக் கொடை. See Bequest meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is bequest?
Bequest can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce bequest?
Bequest is pronounced /bɪˈkwɛst/.
What is the plural of bequest?
The plural of bequest is bequests.

Words near bequest in the dictionary

  1. bequeatheth
  2. bequeathing
  3. bequeathment
  4. bequeathments
  5. bequeaths
  6. bequest
  7. bequested
  8. bequesting
  9. bequests
  10. bequethen
  11. Bequette

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bequest (page history and authors); bequest (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); فرمانا (Urdu) (page history and authors); bequest (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bequest (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bequest (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bequest.wav, En-us-bequest.oga.

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