Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🏛️ Untransferable property ⛓️ Restrictive influence
dead hand

dead hand

9.9
Land owned by a church that cannot be sold or given away
  • noun
  • Archaic
translation icon : mano muerta
  • The church owned vast estates under the dead hand, making them unavailable for redistribution.

Examples

  • Laws were passed to prevent land from remaining under the dead hand for generations.

  • The church's property is considered a dead hand asset.

  • Reformers criticized the dead hand of ecclesiastical control over so much valuable property.

  • Why is the dead hand of the church so influential?

  • Reformers criticized the dead hand of ecclesiastical control over so much valuable property.

  • Laws were passed to prevent land from remaining under the dead hand for generations.

  • The church owned vast estates under the dead hand, making them unavailable for redistribution.

Synonyms

mortmain
vsdead hand
  • Archaic
9.9

The permanent ownership of land by an organization like the church

is the historical legal label for the same inalienable ownership

Surface Forms

dead hand singular
dead hands plural

Morphology

dead + hand

The adjective 'dead' (inactive, from the past) combined with the metaphorical use of 'hand' (an agent of control or influence) plausibly yields the sense of a lingering, restrictive influence. However, this is a figurative/metaphorical composition rather than a literal, fully predictable combination, so a B1 learner who knows the words might not reliably infer the exact idiomatic meaning without exposure.

Etymology

Dead hand comes from old laws when the church kept land forever. People imagined a dead hand holding the land so it 'could not be transferred or sold', so the phrase means property that cannot be moved or sold.