Behoof

Also found in: Dictionary, Idioms.

BEHOOF. As a word of discourse, Signifies need, (egestas, necessitas, indigentia.) It comes from behoove, (Sax. behoven,) to need or have need of. In a secondary sense, which is the law sense of the word, it signifies use, service, profit, advantage, (interesse, opus.) It occurs in conveyances of land in fee simple.

A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States. By John Bouvier. Published 1856.

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It would be greatly for the public behoof if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne.

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"Yes, young man," said he, releasing the handle of the article in question, retiring a step or two from my table, and speaking for the behoof of the landlord and waiter at the door, "I will leave that teapot alone.

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He felt that in letting Dunstan have the money, he had already been guilty of a breach of trust hardly less culpable than that of spending the money directly for his own behoof; and yet there was a distinction between the two acts which made him feel that the one was so much more blackening than the other as to be intolerable to him.