beneficiary

Pluralbeneficiaries

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A person or group that benefits or receives an advantage from an action, decision, or situation.

   Small businesses were the chief beneficiaries of the tax cut.

   He turned out to be an unintended beneficiary of his rival's mistake.

   Similarrecipient

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person entitled to benefit from the distribution of assets, especially from a trust or a deceased person's estate.

   The trust names his two daughters as its beneficiaries.

   As the sole beneficiary of the estate, she inherited the farmhouse and the surrounding land.

   Similarheir, inheritor, legatee

   Note

   Trust law splits ownership in two, and this word names the half that gets the value. Katharina Pistor's The Code of Capital (2020) puts it plainly: the trustee holds formal title, the beneficiary receives the economic interest. Keep the two roles apart, since one manages and the other receives. Trust documents speak of a beneficiary's share and of surviving beneficiaries, among whom a share may pass by right of representation.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The person or entity designated to receive the payout of an insurance policy.

   She updated the beneficiary on her life insurance policy after the divorce.

   The policy's beneficiaries split the death benefit equally.

   Similarrecipient, payee

   Note

   Insurance involves three parties. The policyholder pays, the insured is the person whose life or risk is covered, and the beneficiary is whoever the policyholder designates to collect, most commonly on the insured's death. You name, designate or change a beneficiary. It works much like the trust-law sense, but here the right comes from a contract rather than a trust.

4. 4
   adjective

   Held in subordination to a superior, as a feudal office or possession; having only a dependent and secondary right to what one holds.

   Under the feudal system, a vassal's beneficiary holdings reverted to the lord upon any breach of loyalty.

   The bishop's lands were beneficiary, granted by the crown and revocable at its pleasure.

   Note

   The adjective keeps the Latin idea behind the word. Beneficiarius meant "granted a privilege," from beneficium, "benefit." What is held this way is held by a superior's favor, not by right. Francis Bacon writes of "a feudatory or beneficiary king of England." Today the sense belongs to discussions of medieval landholding and church office. It is not comparable: a holding either is beneficiary or it is not.

5. 5
   adjective

   Given or bestowed as a gratuity rather than as something earned or legally owed.

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