legatee

[ leg-uh-tee ]

noun

1. a person to whom a legacy is bequeathed.

legatee

/ ˌlɛɡəˈtiː /

noun

1. a person to whom a legacy is bequeathed Compare devisee

Word History and Origins

Origin of legatee¹

1670–80; < Latin lēgāt ( us ) ( legate ) + -ee

Example Sentences

She wore white, the color of the suffragette movement, of which Pelosi was a legatee and enormous champion.

From Los Angeles Times

“How can you say that?” he asked, noting that Cheney had opposed same-sex marriage and was a legatee of the father of the Iraq War.

From Washington Post

Walter Frederick Mondale—a pioneering vice president and a nimble ambassador to Japan, the last Democratic nominee who ran for president as the champion of the New Deal coalition, a Hubert Humphrey protégé who was perhaps the final legatee of the glory days of Minnesota’s distinctive Democratic-Farmer-Labor heritage has died at age 93.

From Los Angeles Times

In this respect, Trump is but the crude, know-nothing legatee of a regressive process long in the making.

From The Guardian

Why should Phillips nod to a film of 1936, if not to stake his claim as a legatee?

From The New Yorker

Related Words

• holder
• landowner
• partner
• proprietor