What does entail mean?
To entail something is to make it an unavoidable part of a course of action — to involve or require it as a natural consequence. When we say a decision entails costs, or a job entails travel, we mean those burdens come bundled with the choice and cannot reasonably be avoided. The verb carries a formal, slightly weighty tone, appearing frequently in business reports, legal documents, and academic prose rather than casual conversation. It also has a specialised historical meaning in law: to entail an estate was to restrict its inheritance to a fixed line of descendants, preventing its sale or division. This practice shaped English landholding for centuries and drives the plots of novels like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Derived from Old French 'tailler', meaning 'to cut', entail originally evoked carving an estate into a predetermined shape. Today the everyday sense dominates: wherever consequences are inevitable, entail names them precisely.
To involve, cause, or make necessary as an inevitable consequence or accompaniment.
"Accepting the ambassadorship entails relocating to Geneva for at least three years."
Usually followed by a noun or gerund ('entails signing a contract'); common in formal and professional contexts.
A legal restriction limiting the succession of an estate to a particular line of heirs, so that it cannot be sold or freely bequeathed; an estate so held.
"Under the entail, the manor passed automatically to the nearest male heir each generation."
Almost entirely confined to British legal history and literature; largely abolished in modern law (England abolished most entails via the Law of Property Act 1925).
The plural refers to multiple legal restrictions on estates; rare outside historical and legal discussion.
"The old entails kept vast tracts of Irish land locked within a handful of families."
In old English law, an 'entailed estate' was locked so tightly that it had to pass intact to one line of heirs for generations — which is why Downton Abbey's plot turns on one word: entail.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of entail
Entail comes from the Anglo-Norman and Old French phrase 'entailer', formed from 'en-' plus 'tailler', meaning 'to cut'. In medieval English law, entailing an estate figuratively 'cut' its descent along a single predetermined line of heirs, giving rise to the legal term 'fee tail'. From this legal use developed the broader modern sense of involving or necessitating something as an inevitable consequence, well established by the seventeenth century. It shares its root with words such as tailor, tally, and retail, all ultimately connected to cutting or measuring.
How entail is actually used
Formal to neutral register; very common in business, academic, and policy writing. The noun sense survives almost exclusively in legal-historical contexts, especially discussions of inheritance law in British literature such as Pride and Prejudice.
Easily confused with entail
'Entail' is the standard spelling of the verb meaning to involve necessarily; 'intail' is a rare variant chiefly seen in older legal writing on fee tails.