Meaning & use
personalty
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Meaning
noununcountablelegallawtechnical
In law, all a person's belongings except land and buildings, such as money, furniture, jewelry and shares.
Grammar: Used without an or plural, usually in contrast with realty.
Patterns
- personalty and realty
- bequeath personalty
Her will left the house to her son and the personalty to her daughter.
The court listed the estate's personalty, including furniture and bonds.
Debts were paid first from the personalty before the land was sold.
Common combinations
- personalty and realty
- The will separates personalty and realty.
- bequeath personalty
- He chose to bequeath his personalty to charity.
- sale of personalty
- The sale of personalty raised enough money to cover the debts.
- personalty of the estate
- The personalty of the estate was valued at a modest sum.
- tax on personalty
- Some regions once charged a tax on personalty.
Synonyms and how they differ
- personal property
- Personal property is the ordinary phrase used in modern law, while personalty is an older, more technical-sounding word.
- movables
- Movables stresses that the items can be moved, while personalty is the legal category as a whole.
- chattels
- Chattels is an older word for individual items of movable property, while personalty names the whole class.
- goods
- Goods is general business language for items to sell, while personalty is specifically a legal term for owned property.
Opposites
Word family
- personal adjective
- belonging to one particular person
- personality noun
- a person's character (not the same meaning)
- realty noun
- land and buildings, the opposite of personalty
- property noun
- things that someone owns
Commonly confused: personalty or personality? personalty or realty?
personalty vs personality
Personality means a person's character, but personalty is a legal word for movable belongings, so the spelling differs in the middle.
personalty vs realty
Realty is the legal opposite of personalty, meaning land and buildings.
Practice
In the will, the house and land were left to the nephew, while the furniture, jewelry and bank savings, called the ___, went to the niece.
Choose one answer.
Personalty means movable belongings such as furniture and savings. Realty is land and buildings, personality is character, and tenancy is renting a property.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “personalty”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.