{"id":2324,"date":"2024-11-11T14:09:58","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T19:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2324"},"modified":"2024-11-11T14:12:13","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T19:12:13","slug":"word-of-the-week-usufruct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2024\/11\/11\/word-of-the-week-usufruct\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Usufruct"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jefferson<\/a>Hold onto your chairs. This word erupted on me during my reading of Thomas Jefferson’s letters and travel-diaries, written when he was in France. To James Madison, in a well known 1789 missive about the Constitution, Jefferson claims:<\/p>\n

I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, \u2018that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living\u2019: that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

You can find the letter in its entirety at The National Archives here<\/a>. I’d never encountered our word before, so a bit of sleuthing can help me (and you) with this vital and hard-to-pronounce term. The OED is cranky today, not letting me in with my university account, but at least their fact sheet<\/a> has some useful data: US pronunciation would be “YOO-zuh-fruhckt” and thanks to the non-paywalled Wikipedia<\/a>, the meaning remains simple: “a usufruct is a system in which a person or group of persons uses the real property (often land) of another.”<\/p>\n

I think that Jefferson sought to escape (Metaphor of the Month coming!) “the dead hand of the past,” as his new nation sought to remake itself as a Constitutional Republic. The document underpinning the Republic could and should be subject to change, as needs changed in the future.<\/p>\n

Neither Madison nor Jefferson nor any of the Founders could do more than start a process, one never finished.<\/p>\n

I suggest that in these times we all consider not only the word, still common in legal discourse, but also the concept as we enter uncertain times and the usufruct of our common nation remains an open question.<\/p>\n

Please send useful words and metaphors to me at jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu or by leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n

Image: Hamilton Fan-Art, Creative Commons License. Those rascals!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hold onto your chairs. This word erupted on me during my reading of Thomas Jefferson’s letters and travel-diaries, written when he was in France. To James Madison, in a well known 1789 missive about the Constitution, Jefferson claims: I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, \u2018that the earth belongs in … Continue reading Word of the Week! Usufruct<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87402,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-2324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-writing","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-Bu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2324"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2329,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions\/2329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}