How ‘Legacy’ Came to Mean an Unfair Advantage

Linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer analyzes the origins of words in the news. Read previous columns here.

Colleges across the country have started to rethink legacy admission policies that favor applicants with family relationships to alumni or donors. After the Supreme Court’s ruling that Harvard University’s use of race-based affirmative action is unconstitutional, the Education Department this week announced a civil-rights investigation into Harvard’s legacy preferences, aiming to determine whether the policy disproportionately gives white students an edge. Wesleyan University and the University of Minnesota are the latest schools to end legacy preferences in admissions altogether.

With the preferential status of legacy students under fire, it’s a good time to consider the legacy of the word “legacy” itself and how it has been passed down through generations.

“Legacy,” originally spelled “legacie,” entered the English language in the 14th century from French, in an era when England looked to France to supply much of the lexicon of law, government and business. At the time, “legacy” could refer to a member of a delegation sent on a mission. That meaning goes back to the Latin word legatus for an ambassador or envoy, related to the verb legare, meaning “to send as a deputy” or “to assign as a representative.” Etymological cousins include such words as “delegate,” “relegate” and “colleague.” Indeed, “college” itself shares a root, since it comes from the Latin collegium for a gathering of colleagues.

Another meaning of the Latin verb legare is “to bequeath,” which influenced the development of a second meaning of “legacy” in English to refer to money or property left in a will. As one legal treatise from 1590 defined the term, a “legacy” is “a gift left by the deceased, to be paid or performed by the Executor or administrator.”

It wasn’t long before “legacy” took on a more extended use for anything valuable handed down by a predecessor or a figure from the past. Writing in The Spectator in 1711, Joseph Addison opined, “Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.”

Around the turn of the 20th century, “legacy” developed a special meaning at American colleges for students who were the children of alumni. Early examples can be found in the pages of fraternity publications. In the November 1901 issue of The Purple and Gold, published by the Chi Psi national fraternity, a correspondent from the Alpha Rho chapter at Rutgers University reported on the initiation of “four neophytes from the class of 1905,” including two “sons of F.A. Wilber ’79.” Several alumni attended because “the Wilber brothers are Rho’s first legacies.”

While fraternities and sororities may have been the first to give preferential treatment to “legacies” in the selection of prospective candidates, the terminology spread to college admissions more widely. In the 1920s, admission policies favoring “legacies” took hold at elite American colleges, in large part motivated by white Protestants being alarmed that Jewish and Catholic students were taking an increasing number of spots in incoming classes.

In a 1946 report, Cornell University president Edmund Ezra Day stated, “It has been my view right along that Cornell legacies should be given preference over other applicants of comparable qualifications.” Legacy preferences have been criticized by lawmakers since at least 1990, when then Senate Minority Bob Dole

Beyond the ivy-covered walls of colleges, the word “legacy” has been taken up in business circles to refer to discontinued or superseded practices, especially when digital technologies replace older analog ones. In computing, outmoded hardware and software have been dubbed “legacy systems” since the 1980s. Given the latest trends, “legacies” may soon be outmoded in higher education too.