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n. pl. leg·a·cies 1. Money or property given to another by will. 2. Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past: a legacy of religious freedom. See Synonyms at heritage. 3. An individual who is either an applicant to an educational institution or a matriculated student and is the child of an alumna or alumnus. adj. Retained under an obsolescent or discarded system, chiefly for purposes of reference: legacy files in the old email system. [Middle English legacie, office of a deputy, from Old French, from Medieval Latin lēgātia, from Latin lēgātus, past participle of lēgāre, to depute, bequeath; see leg- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.] |
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