The act of creating an entailment; restricting how property can be inherited, used, or sold to keep an estate within a family or under specific conditions.
From 'entail' + '-ing' (present participle/gerund). Entail derives from Old French 'entailler,' meaning to limit or restrict inheritance through legal means.
When wealthy fathers were 'entailing' their estates in the 1700s, they thought they were being brilliant—locking property in forever—but many of those entailments created bitter family conflicts and actually prevented estates from being updated or improved for generations.
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