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bequest.

The act of bequeathing or leaving by will.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/bɪˈkwɛst/
  1. The act of bequeathing or leaving by will.

  2. The transfer of property upon the owner's death according to the will of the deceased.

  3. That which is left by will; a legacy.

  4. That which has been handed down or transmitted.

  5. A person's inheritance; an amount of property given by will.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English biqueste, bequeste (“will, testament, bequest”), from be- + quiste, queste (“saying, utterance, testament, will, legacy”), from Old English *cwist, *cwiss (“saying”) (compare Old English andcwiss, ġecwis, uncwisse, etc.), from Proto-Germanic *kwissiz (“saying”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷet- (“to say”). Related to Old English andcwiss (“answer, reply”), Old English uncwisse (“dumb, mute”), Middle English bequethen (“to bequeath”). Not related to quest, which is from Latin. More at quoth, bequeath.

verb
  1. To give as a bequest; bequeath.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English biquesten, from the noun (see above).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.