Word.ws English Dictionary

legacy

Syllables: le·ga·cy/ˈleɪɡəsi/UK/ˈlɛɡəsi/

legacy noun: money or property bequeathed to someone in a will.

Noun

legacy (plural legacies)

  1. Money or property bequeathed to someone in a will.
  2. Something inherited from a predecessor or the past.
    • John Muir left as his legacy an enduring spirit of respect for the environment.
    • During the first year or so of British Railways, some of the simpler and more obvious inter-regional transfers of outlying sections were effected, such as those of the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway from the London Midland Region to the Eastern Region; the South Wales lines of the former...1951 April, D. S. Barrie, “British Railways: A Survey, 1948-1950”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 224
    Synonyms:
    heritage
  3. The descendant of an alumnus, given preference in academic admissions.
    • Because she was a legacy, her mother's sorority rushed her.

Adjective

legacy (not comparable)

  1. (especially) Left over from the past; old and no longer current.
    • They have no idea what occurs in the network or its topology, and all of the services remain dependent on it — a very legacy approach to creating services in the optical network.2000, International Engineering Consortium, The Emerging Optical Network, →ISBN, page 75
    • However, pre-relational DBMS are legacy.2003, Carlo Zaniolo, Peter C. Lockemann, Marc H. Scholl, Advances in Database Technology - EDBT 2000, →ISBN
  2. (postpositional, sometimes) Belonging to a class of boardgame where permanent changes are made to game elements such as the board, cards and rules over multiple play sessions.
    • Risk Legacy, in 2011, was the first game to give visibility to the idea of progressive and irreversible discovery in the board gaming hobby, 2 and it did so by applying it to the well-known game Risk.2018 September 13, Marco Arnaudo, Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends from the Late 1960s to Today, McFarland, →ISBN, page 183
    • Over the course of the years that Daviau worked on Seafall, the first legacy game that was not based on a previously existing product, the mechanic became one of the hotter things in game design2019 October 8, Eric Thurm, Avidly Reads Board Games, NYU Press, →ISBN, page 118

legacy meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

legacy in Tamil

உயில்வழிக் கொடை, மரபுவழி எச்சம், உயில்வழிக்கொடை, மரபுடைமை எச்சம், விருப்புரிமைக் கொடை, விருப்புறுதிக் கொடை

legacy in Marathi

वारसा

legacy in Urdu

legacy, bequest
وصیت vasiyat
legacy, trust
وقف vaqf

legacy in Bengali

পৈতৃক সম্পত্তি, মৃতু্যকালে দত্ত সম্পত্তি
More languagesFewer languages
legacy in Telugu
వారసత్వం
legacy in Malayalam
മരണശാസനദാനം, പൈതൃകം, പാരമ്പര്യം
legacy in Kannada
ಪಿತ್ರಾರ್ಜಿತ, ಪೂರ್ವಾರ್ಜಿತ ಆಸ್ತಿ, ಉಯಿಲಿನಿಂದ ಬಂದ ಹಣ, ಉಯಿಲಿನಿಂದ ಬಂದ ಸ್ವತ್ತು
legacy in Punjabi
ਵਿਰਸੇ
legacy in Gujarati
વારસો
legacy in Sanskrit
रेक्णस् rekṇas
legacy in Nepali
विरासत
legacy in Tagalog
pamana
legacy in Arabic
إرْث ʔirṯ, تَرِكَة tarika
legacy in Indonesian
warisan, legasi
legacy in Thai
มรดก mɔɔ-rá-dòk
legacy in Vietnamese
di sản

Examples of legacy in a sentence

  • Finally, the organisation ends up with an expensive ERP of which it uses only part because of divergent evolutionary directions and a set of new systems fast becoming legacy.2006, Anne Gams Steine Asserson, Eduard J. Simons, Enabling Interaction and Quality: Beyond the Hanseatic League, →ISBN, page 118:
  • There was talk in the past that ERP systems were legacy, lacked the agility and flexibility, and did not support interoperability.2008, CIO - 15 Feb 2008 Vol. 21, No. 9, page 49:
  • Because most of these HALs are legacy and only used on aging or outdated hardware, chances are that you do not have any in your lab and must be creative in procuring one from an active user.2009, Kerrie Meyler, Byron Holt, Greg Ramsey, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 Unleashed, →ISBN:
  • Pandemic Legacy can take weeks or even months to play given different groups' play styles.2020 August 28, Douglas Brown, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, Rerolling Boardgames: Essays on Themes, Systems...

All 40 example sentences with legacy

Synonyms of legacy

Forms of legacy

plurallegacies

Plural of legacy: legacies

Origin of legacy

From Middle English legacie, from Old French legacie and Medieval Latin lēgātia, from Latin lēgātum. Compare legatee. The boardgame sense was coined by game designer Rob Daviau in 2011 with the game Risk Legacy.

Words formed from legacy

Phrases with legacy

Questions about legacy

What does legacy mean?
Legacy means money or property bequeathed to someone in a will.
What is legacy in Tamil?
Legacy in Tamil is உயில்வழிக் கொடை, மரபுவழி எச்சம், உயில்வழிக்கொடை. See Legacy meaning in Tamil.
How do you use legacy in a sentence?
Finally, the organisation ends up with an expensive ERP of which it uses only part because of divergent evolutionary directions and a set of new systems fast becoming legacy.
What part of speech is legacy?
Legacy can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce legacy?
Legacy is pronounced /ˈlɛɡəsi/ (UK).
What is the plural of legacy?
The plural of legacy is legacies.

Words near legacy in the dictionary

  1. leg-work
  2. leg.
  3. Lega
  4. legable
  5. legacies
  6. legacy
  7. legacy code
  8. legacy hunter
  9. legacy hunters
  10. legacy media
  11. legacy Oscar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: legacy (page history and authors); legacy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); legacy (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); وصیت (Urdu) (page history and authors); legacy (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); legacy (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); legacy (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); legacy (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); legacy (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); legacy (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); legacy (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-legacy.ogg.

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