Other forms: deeds
A deed is the legal document proving who owns a property. The title deeds, hold the deeds, the deeds are with the bank.
It is usually plural in ordinary speech — the deeds to the house — and in England and Wales most ownership is now recorded electronically at the Land Registry, so physical deeds matter less than they did. A deed is also any formal signed document: a deed of trust, a deed poll for changing a name. The everyday sense is simply a thing done: a good deed, deeds not words.
1noundeedA legal document proving ownership of property.
“The deeds had been in the same solicitor's safe since 1954.”
2noundoneSomething done.
“It was a good deed and it caused an enormous amount of trouble.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
deed is a document or an act.
Old English ded comes from don, to do — a deed is literally a thing done. The legal sense arose because a written deed was the record of an act performed, which is why the same word covers a good turn and a property document.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰéh₁tis — deed, action
Proto-Germanic
*dēdiz — deed
Proto-West Germanic
*dādi
Old English
dēd
Middle English
dede
English, today
deed
Built from
From Middle English dede, from Old English dēd, dǣd (“deed, act”), from Proto-West Germanic dādi, from Proto-Germanic dēdiz (“deed”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰéh₁tis (“deed, action”). Analyzable through Proto-Germanic as do + th. a doublet of thesis. The real estate sense derives from the fact that property deeds are traditionally used to demonstrate proof of ownership of a legal title in common law jurisdictions, such as England & Wales and most of the United States. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA