Language Trivia

The good folk at Language Log offer a new name for a problem that I would have called abandoned acronyms: orphaned initialisms.

But, the reason I raise this here is that we (all of you and I) can develop a list of orphaned legalisms and forever eliminate them from legal documents.

I nominate as No. 1 on the list: devise

This word has for more than a century appeared tied to give and bequeath.

But it was only briefly required in Scotland by a specific piece of legislation that dealt with the transfer of real property (read: land and attachments). But it was taken up throughout the Commonwealth because the Scots had a habit of emigrating while maintaining claims to land back in Scotland.

When the property conveyance statute was repealed (after a very short period of time, as I recall, maybe a decade) nobody told the drafters around the world that they could stop using devise in order to ensure that the will would succesfully transfer real property in Scotland.

So, death to devise!