usufruct — English Dictionary

Noun

1. The legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged.

   Synonyms

   liferent

   Examples

   More examples (3)

   We ought to obſerve, that Uſufruct or Uſe for the Profits, and other ſort of Servitudes are the Rights which we enjoy gratuitouſly: For if we pay an Annual Rent, 'twill be then a kind of Letting or Hiring.

   [T]eaching the Koran is not property; neither does usufruct constitute property (according to the sentiments of our doctors), because that is not substantial or permanent, whereas property is a thing of a permanent nature, and what constitutes actual wealth; […]

   In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested; when one slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped the usufruct.

   Every American college president, it appears, is in duty bound to write and utter at least one book upon the nature, aims and usufructs of the Higher Education.

   More examples (2)

   International law recognizes a use right that is akin to the civil law usufruct or the common law life estate, lease, or profit. Like other property rights, such a usufruct may be characterized as an entitlement of a person that is related to an immovable or movable thing. It differs from ownership in certain respects. First, although the holder is entitled to the exclusive possession and use of the thing, and to all fruits it produces, he or she may not cause damage to the thing itself. Second, the duration of a usufruct may be limited in time, unlike ownership which is usually viewed as perpetual. Finally, the rights of the usufruct holder are effective against both the owner and the world in general.

   The hamsters conferred privately before one of them answered curtly: “We want a raise, Madame,” then he coughed. “I’ve already granted you usufruct of the dead mackerels floating on the Seine!”

Verb

1. To use and derive profit or benefit from property that belongs to another person.

   Usage

   • also
   • Figurative

   Examples

   More examples (5)

   An enabling myth is just that—a myth that enables those who benefit from the status quo to keep on benefiting. Thorstein Veblen would say that it enabled the usufructuaries to keep on usufructing.

   The use of the property of an orphan by a guardian who carries out his guardianship, is allowed for the latter's daily subsistence. Such use should be just and reasonable. […] According to al-Sha'bá, such just and reasonable use is like usufructing the milk of cattle, having services from servants and riding animals or vehicles, as long as such usufruction does not impair or damage the property itself.

   The El Ferrocarril newspaper on May 26, 1889 worried that foreign capital had transformed the nitrate region into "a kind of English India, usufructed [i.e. deriving profit from land which is not theirs] by a multitude of limited companies organized outside Chile, without any national interest, whose directors can easily come to understandings on monopolies of production and consumption, leaving the nation with a sovereignty more nominal than real" (author's translation).

   So they got together for a big meeting someplace and started an organization that would protect bullies from people who would not allow them to usufruct with impunity.

   [Lucio] Gutiérrez was sold to public opinion as an ally of the popular sectors, with the promise of putting an end to the oligarchic elites who had usufructed and seized the Ecuadorian state. The truth is that, once in power, Gutiérrez broke the pact with the indigenous sector; three years later, in April 2005, he was deposed from government.

Noun

1. a legal right to use and derive profit from property belonging to someone else provided that the property itself is not injured in any way

   Broader terms

   legal right