#WordOfTheDay for Tuesday, October 22, 2013 chattel \CHAT-l\, - TopicsExpress

#WordOfTheDay for Tuesday, October 22, 2013 chattel \CHAT-l\, noun: 1. Law. a movable article of personal property. 2. any article of tangible property other than land, buildings, and other things annexed to land. 3. a slave. Mr. Price has instructed me to visit with you and make arrangements for a transfer of chattel to the bank sufficient to cover the amount of —he looked down at his clipboard— one thousand dollars even. -- Will Weaver, Red Earth White Earth, 1986 But now! Gervase himself had not seemed a very important part of that triumph a little while ago. He had been a chattel of hers, a piece of property as much her own as her parasol. -- Margaret Oliphant, The Cuckoo in the Nest, 1892 Chattel came to English in the 1400s and shares a root with the word cattle.