personalty Law.
(ˈpɜːsənəltɪ)
[ad. late AF. personaltie = med.L. persōnālitās personality: cf. reality, realty.]
† a. See quots. 1607, 1888. b. Personal goods, personal estate: see personal A. 6; also gen. personal belongings. c. = personality 6 c. rare.
| a 1481 Littleton Tenures §315 iii. iv. (1516) D v b, Pur ceo qe laccion est en le personalte & nemye en le realte. 1544 translation, Bycause that the accyon is in the parsonalte and nat in the realte. 1607 Cowell Interpr., Personalty (Personalitas), is an abstract of personall. The action is in the personalty,..that is to say, brought against the right person, or the person against whome in lawe it lieth. 1766 Blackstone Comm. II. xxiv. 385 Our courts now regard a man's personalty in a light nearly, if not quite, equal to his realty: and have adopted a more enlarged and less technical mode of considering the one than the other. 1827 Jarman J. J. Powell's Devises (ed. 3) II. 163 The intention to confine the word ‘estate’ to personalty was inferred by the subsequent specification. 1845 Stephen Comm. Laws Eng. (1874) I. 167 Things personal, (otherwise called personalty,) consist of goods, money, and all other moveables, and of such rights and profits as relate to moveables. 1865 Look Before You Leap I. 12 His gay jacket, his horses, and a few personalties. 1880 Gladstone Speech 15 Mar., You will find that the duties on personalties of half a million or one million are comparatively insignificant; and so it is in regard to rates. 1888 T. C. Williams in Law Quarterly Rev. IV. 405 Actions were said to be or to sound in the realty or in the personalty, according to the nature of the relief afforded therein. Next the terms, the realty, the personalty were applied to the things recoverable in real or personal actions respectively. Such things were then distinguished as real or personal things. |