What does feasance mean?
Feasance is a formal legal term meaning the performance of a duty or obligation — the actual carrying out of something one is bound to do. In contemporary English it rarely stands alone; instead it lives on inside three familiar compounds built from it. Malfeasance denotes performing an official act wrongfully or unlawfully, misfeasance refers to a lawful act done improperly or carelessly, and nonfeasance is the outright failure to perform a required duty. Together these terms let lawyers draw precise distinctions among doing wrong, doing badly, and not doing at all. The word derives from Old French fesance, from feire 'to do', ultimately from Latin facere, which also gives us words like fact and manufacture. Though obscure in isolation, feasance repays attention: understanding it clarifies a whole family of terms that appear constantly in news coverage of official misconduct, corporate governance scandals, and legal proceedings, where the exact nature of an official's failure matters greatly.
nounThe performance of a duty or obligation, especially an official or legal one. The word is now rarely used on its own and appears almost exclusively in the compounded forms malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance.
- The act or fact of performing a duty or obligation, especially in legal contexts (now chiefly found in the compounds malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance).
"The auditor confirmed the officer's full feasance of every statutory duty assigned to the office."
"The tribunal examined whether the trustee's feasance of her fiduciary duties had been timely and complete."
"In older legal texts, feasance was contrasted point by point with nonfeasance — doing versus failing to do."
The plural is rare and largely theoretical; the word is normally treated as an uncountable abstraction, and even in legal writing the plural form is uncommon.
"The opinion compared various feasances across the several offices under review."
You've almost certainly read 'feasance' hundreds of times without noticing — it only ever shows up wearing a prefix like mal-, mis-, or non-.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of feasance
Feasance comes from Old French fesance, a verbal noun derived from feire 'to do or make', which descends from the Latin verb facere. This makes it a cousin of a wide family of English words from the same root, including fact, faction, factor, and manufacture. The word entered English through legal usage, where it became productive as a base for the prefixed forms malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance, which remain its principal modern vehicles.
Related word forms
How feasance is actually used
Feasance is a formal legal term and is seldom used as a free-standing word in modern English; it survives almost entirely within the three prefixed compounds. Writers today normally name the specific form they mean (misfeasance rather than 'improper feasance').
Easily confused with feasance
Malfeasance means wrongdoing — the performance of a duty in an improper or unlawful manner — whereas feasance is simply proper performance.
Misfeasance is lawful action performed improperly or negligently; feasance denotes correct, duly performed action.
Nonfeasance is the failure to perform a required duty at all; feasance is that duty's actual performance.