Word.ws English Dictionary

excheat

excheat is the obsolete form of escheat.

Meaning of escheat

Noun

escheat (countable and uncountable, plural escheats)

  1. The return, conversion, or vesting of property of a deceased person or closed business to the government (originally to a feudal lord) where there are no legal heirs or claimants. It is known as bona vacantia in the United Kingdom.
  2. The property so reverted.
  3. (obsolete) Plunder, booty.
    • Approching, with bold words and bitter threat, / Bad that same boaster, as he mote, on high / To leaue to him that Lady for excheat, / Or bide him battell without further treat.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  4. That which falls to one; a reversion or return.
    • And by my ruines thinkes to make them great: / To make one great by others losse, is bad excheat1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 25

See all 6 meanings of escheat

Forms of excheat

pluralexcheats

Questions about excheat

What is excheat the obsolete form of?
Excheat is the obsolete form of escheat.

Words near excheat in the dictionary

  1. exchanging flesh
  2. exchanging of contracts
  3. exchanging vows
  4. Exchangite
  5. Exchangites
  6. excheat
  7. excheator
  8. excheators
  9. excheats
  10. exchecker
  11. excheckers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: excheat (page history and authors); escheat (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: “excheat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/excheat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.