Definition of "apanage"

apanage

/ˈæpənɪd͡ʒ/

noun
plural apanages
1. (historical) A grant (especially by a sovereign) of land (or other source of revenue) as a birthright.
  Quotations
  Well, prince, Genoa and Lucca are now nothing more than the apanages, than the private property of the Bonaparte family.
  1889, Lyof N[ikolayevich] Tolstoï [i.e., Leo Tolstoy], chapter I, in Nathan Haskell Dole, transl., War and Peace […] In Four Volumes, volume I, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y[oung] Crowell & Co. […], part first, page 1
  they suspected that Peter II was only waiting till he had saved enough of his apanage to run away to some more civilized country.
  1942, Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Canongate, published 2006, page 1046
2. A perquisite that is appropriate to one's position; an accompaniment.
  Quotations
  For, though I don't very much want books and opera and etchings and wines and liqueurs—still, if I want them I can have them at any moment. And that sense of security is worth more than a thousand of the temperamental ecstasies and agonies that are the appanage of hard-up youth.
  1918 , Thomas Burke, Nights in London‎, New York: Henry Holt and Company
verb
third-person singular simple present apanages, present participle apanaging, simple past and past participle apanaged
1. (transitive) To confer an apanage upon.