infeoff

Verb

enfeoff (third-person singular simple present enfeoffs or (obsolete) enfeoffes, present participle enfeoffing, simple past and past participle enfeoffed)

1. (historical, transitive) To transfer a fief to, to endow with a fief; to put (a person) in legal possession of a freehold interest.
   • Suppose a man bargains to enfeoff me, as in our case here, and he afterwards enfeoffs another, and then he re-enters [i.e. on the first feoffee] and enfeoffs me, and the other ousts me. Now here the action of covenant may not be brought, because he has at last enfeoffed me according to his...[1442, William Paston, Justice of the Common Pleas, Shipton v. Dogge (No. 2); Doige’s Case (Y. B. Trinity 20 Hen. VI, folio 34, pl. 4; Selden Society volume 51, page 97); quoted in A[lfred] W[illiam]...

   Synonyms:

   feoff

2. (figuratively, transitive) To give up completely; to surrender, to yield.
   • [M]ore than one well-wisher who observed Ethelberta from afar feared that it might some day come to be said of her that she had / Enfeoffed herself to popularity: / That, being daily swallow'd by men's eyes, / They surfeited with honey, and began / To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little...1876, Thomas Hardy, “Ethelberta’s House (continued)—The British Museum”, in The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 265

   Synonyms:

   cede