Chattel
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Tangible, movable property.
"[…] although of course the firm had changed hands many times over the centuries, […] But the box has always been part of the chattels, as it were."
- 2 personal as opposed to real property; any tangible movable property (furniture or domestic animals or a car etc.) wordnet
- 3 A slave.
"Not all his servants and chattels are wraiths!"
Example
More examples"Indentured servitude is often contrasted with chattel slavery."
Etymology
From Middle English chatel, from Old French chatel, from Medieval Latin capitāle (English capital), from Latin capitālis (“of the head”), from caput (“head”) + -alis (“-al”). Compare the doublet cattle (“cows”), which is from an Anglo-Norman variant. Compare also capital and kith and kine (“all one’s possessions”), which also use “cow” to mean “property”.
Related phrases
More for "chattel"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.