Entail Meaning
/ɛnˈteɪl/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
verbTo imply, require, or invoke.
verbTo settle or fix inalienably on a person or thing, or on a person and his descendants or a certain line of descendants; -- said especially of an estate; to bestow as a heritage.
Sentence Examples
The project will entail great expense upon the company.
What does your job entail?
CEFR Practice Quiz
Accepting this job offer will ____ moving to a new country.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Starting a new business will ____ significant financial risk and hard work.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English entaillen, from Old French entaillier, entailler (“to notch”, literally “to cut in”); from prefix en- + tailler (“to cut”), from Late Latin taliare, from Latin talea. Compare late Latin feudum talliatum (“a fee entailed, i.e., curtailed or limited”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"What mattered to Hegel, and now Leach, is a presupposedly, historically necessary evolution in the structure of political power, entailing the creation of new classes of powerless victims to be sacrificed on the altar of abstract ideological concepts (i.e., “choice”)."
— 1997 April 12, Richard Ring, “Secular, abortion-believers are the bloodiest lot”, in The Daily News, page A11:
"God's immateriality entails the divine attribute of incorporeality, that God is neither a body nor embodied."
— 2003, James Porter Moreland, William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, →ISBN, page 507:
"It also entailed well-documented disadvantages: a population increase in an unsustaining economy, a battered self-identity, a plague of substance abuse."
— 2009 July 24, Holland Cotter, “Postcards From Canada’s ‘New North’”, in The New York Times:
"Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and their mother's fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply the deficiency of his."
— 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter VII, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 50:
"I here entail The crown to thee and to thine heirs forever."
— c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
Accepting this job offer will ____ moving to a new country.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Starting a new business will ____ significant financial risk and hard work.