Capable of being entailed; referring to property or inheritance that can be restricted or tied up under legal entailment conditions.
From 'entail' (from Old French 'entailler,' meaning to cut into, or in legal context, to limit) + '-able' (capable of). The legal meaning developed from the idea of 'cutting into' or limiting how property could be distributed.
In medieval Europe, wealthy families used entailment to keep estates from being broken up or sold—a daughter couldn't inherit and her husband couldn't sell it, so the 'entailable' property stayed in the family for generations, which is why some families owned the same land for 500+ years.
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