A legal term from Old English law referring to the wrongful waste or destruction of property by an executor or administrator.
From Latin 'devastavit' (he/she/it has laid waste), the perfect tense of 'devastare.' This specialized legal term was borrowed directly from Latin into English legal vocabulary.
'Devastavit' is a perfectly preserved word fossil—it's almost never used in modern law, but when an executor mismanages an estate, they technically committed 'devastavit,' a legal term that hasn't changed since the Middle Ages!
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