Word.ws English Dictionary

fee tail

fee tail noun: an estate in land in common law in which the land is inherited, but cannot be sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the owner, but which passes by operation of law to the owner's heirs upon his death.

Noun

fee tail (plural fees tail)

  1. An estate in land in common law in which the land is inherited, but cannot be sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the owner, but which passes by operation of law to the owner's heirs upon his death.

Forms of fee tail

pluralfees tail

Origin of fee tail

From Middle English fee taille, fetayll, from Anglo-Norman fee tailé, from Medieval Latin foedum talliātum.

Questions about fee tail

What does fee tail mean?
Fee tail means an estate in land in common law in which the land is inherited, but cannot be sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the owner, but which passes by operation of law to the owner's heirs upon his death.
What part of speech is fee tail?
Fee tail is a noun.
What is the plural of fee tail?
The plural of fee tail is fees tail.

Words near fee tail in the dictionary

  1. fee simple subject to executory interest
  2. fee simple subject to executory limitation
  3. fee simples determinable
  4. fee splitting
  5. fee splittings
  6. fee tail
  7. fee-faw-fum
  8. fee-faw-fums
  9. fee-fees
  10. fee-fi-fo-fum
  11. fee-for-service

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fee tail (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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