legacy hunter
English
Alternative forms
- legacy-hunter
Etymology
Calque of Latin hērēdipeta.
Noun
legacy hunter (plural legacy hunters)
- One that strives after an inheritance.
- 1817, Maria Edgeworth, chapter IX, in Ormond:
- “ […] I am a great hunter, but not legacy hunter, that is a kind of hunting I despise—and I wish every hunter of that kind may be thrown out, or thrown off, and may never be in at the death!”
- 1837, John William Kaye, chapter XIX, in Doveton, volume 2, page 249:
- I am a legacy-hunter, a parasite, a rich man's minion. I bitterly despise myself already. The very servants will sneer at me; the lowest groom in the stable will point at me.
Further reading
- “legacy hunter” in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press.
- “legacy hunter” in Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary.