Trustee
nounA person or organisation legally appointed to hold and manage property, money, or assets for the benefit of someone else.
How to spell trustee
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce trustee
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does trustee mean?
- nounA person or organisation legally appointed to hold and manage property, money, or assets for the benefit of someone else.
Trustee in a sentence
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The trustee signed off on the release of the inheritance funds.
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Each trustee of the charity must declare any conflict of interest.
Where does trustee come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
The base word trust came into English from Old Norse traust, which meant 'help, confidence, protection, or firmness', and was related to old Germanic words for being strong and reliable. From the 1200s English used trust for confidence placed in a person or thing, and later for the legal arrangement in which one party holds property for the benefit of another. The ending -ee arrived through French, where it marked the past participle (the person on the receiving end of an action), as in employee or payee. Combined around the early 1600s, trustee literally names the person who is entrusted, the one to whom something is committed for safekeeping. The double construction is the spelling trap: a single internal s and a doubled final e, unlike the adjective trusty, which has no second e at all.
How the word is built
- trust (confidence, a legal arrangement to hold property)
- -ee (one who is the object or recipient of an action)
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