legacy is something received from a predecessor or from the past — in law, money or property left to someone by will, and more broadly whatever a person, generation, or institution hands on to those who follow.
The word entered English in the late fourteenth century from Medieval Latin legatia, from legatus, "envoy, deputy," and legare, "to send with a commission, appoint by a last will." Its first English sense was the office or mission of a legate; the sense of property bequeathed by will appears in Scottish usage by the mid-fifteenth century. The figurative sense — a reputation, influence, or body of work that outlasts its maker — grew from that testamentary core.
Legacy sits close to inheritance, which names what is received rather than what is left, and to heritage, which suggests a shared, often cultural, inheritance rather than an individual bequest. Bequest is the narrower legal term for the act or object of leaving property by will. Two specialized senses run alongside: in computing, a legacy system is older technology still in use, usually because replacing it is costly; in American college admissions, a legacy is an applicant whose parent attended the school. The computing sense tends to carry a note of burden, where the personal sense usually carries honor.
I measure legacy by what keeps going without me. In 📝My Legacy I named it as the transformational experiences cultivated for those who encounter the projects I create, and I want it to take the form of 📝Living Systems that outlast me.