escrow

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Money, property, a deed, or a bond put into the custody of a third party for delivery to a grantee only after the fulfillment of the conditions specified.
• transitive verb To place in escrow.
• idiom (in escrow) In trust as an escrow.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In law, a writing fully executed by the parties, but put into the custody of a third person to hold until the fulfilment of some condition, when it is to be delivered to the grantee.
• noun The conditional execution and deposit of an instrument in such way.
• noun The custody of a writing so deposited.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Law) A deed, bond, or other written engagement, delivered to a third person, to be held by him till some act is done or some condition is performed, and then to be by him delivered to the grantee.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun law A written instrument, such as a deed, temporarily deposited with a neutral third party (the Escrow agent), by the agreement of two parties to a valid contract. The escrow agent will deliver the document to the benefited party when the conditions of the contract have been met. The depositor has no control over the instrument in escrow.
• noun law In common law, escrow applied to the deposits only of instruments for conveyance of land, but it now applies to all instruments so deposited.
• noun law Money or other property so deposited is also loosely referred to as escrow.
• noun The state of property deposited with an escrow agent.
• verb To place in escrow.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a written agreement (or property or money) delivered to a third party or put in trust by one party to a contract to be returned after fulfillment of some condition