Messuage

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In law, the term messuage equates to a dwelling-house and includes outbuildings, orchard, curtilage or court-yard and garden. At one time messuage supposedly had a more extensive meaning than that comprised in the word house or site, but such distinction, if it ever existed, no longer survives.

A capital messuage is the main messuage of an estate, the house in which the owner of the estate normally lives.

The word messuage derives from the Anglo-French mesuage (holding), probably a corruption of popular Latin mansio, whence modern French maison (house), from manere (to dwell).

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.