devises

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular present of devise.

   The committee devises strategies to reduce waste across the city.

   Each season, the designer devises a fresh collection from scratch.

   Note

   Both of the verb's living meanings appear in this form. An engineer devises a mechanism, and a testator devises land to an heir. In the legal meaning the verb takes the property as its object and the heir after "to". Older meanings, such as plotting or imagining, are archaic or obsolete. A subject before the word usually tells it apart from the plural legal noun.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of devise.

   The lawyer explained the various devises named in the estate documents.

   Disputes over the devises delayed the settlement for months.

   Note

   The plural belongs mostly to the law of wills. Devises are gifts of real property made by will, the clauses that make those gifts, or the land and buildings handed on. One will can hold several devises, each naming what property goes to whom. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb: "the devises in her will" and "she devises the farm to her son" are the same word doing two grammatical jobs.

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