Liberal Dictionary English Dictionary
noun
- Law. Often chattels. a movable article of personal property.
- Often chattels. any article of tangible property other than land, buildings, and other things annexed to land.
- a slave.
noun
- (often plural) property law
- chattel personalan item of movable personal property, such as furniture, domestic animals, etc
- chattel realan interest in land less than a freehold, such as a lease
- goods and chattels personal property
early 13c., chatel “property, goods,” from Old French chatel “chattels, goods, wealth, possessions, property; profit; cattle,” from Late Latin capitale “property” (see cattle, which is the Old North French form of the same word). Application to slaves (1640s) is a rhetorical figure of abolitionists, etc.