estate

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
estate/ɪˈsteɪt/

▶noun

• 1 a property consisting of a large house and extensive grounds.

  ■ a property where coffee, rubber, grapes, or other crops are cultivated.

• 2 Brit. an area of land and buildings developed for residential, industrial, or commercial purposes.

• 3 a person's money and property in its entirety at the time of their death.

• 4 (also estate of the realm) a class or order forming part of the body politic, in particular (in Britain) one of the three groups constituting Parliament, now the Lords spiritual (the heads of the Church), the Lords temporal (the peerage), and the Commons (also known as the three estates).

• 5 archaic or literary a particular state, period, or condition in life: the holy estate of matrimony.

• 6 Brit. an estate car.

– origin ME: from OFr. estat, from L. status ‘state, condition’, from stare ‘to stand’.