inheritance
/ɪnˈhɛɹɪtəns/ noun
Forms inheritances enheritance enheritaunce inheritaunce inhæritance
- noun The passing of title to an estate upon death.
- noun (countable) That which a person is entitled to inherit, by law or testament, such as the part of an estate (i.e., a portion).
- noun (uncountable, especially linguistics, biology) The act or mechanism of inheriting; the state of having inherited. “The Indo-European languages share various similarities as a result of their inheritance from a common ancestor.”
- noun (biology, genetic algorithms) The biological attributes passed hereditarily from ancestors to their offspring.
- noun (programming, object-oriented programming) The mechanism whereby parts of a superclass are available to instances of its subclass.
Synonyms
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English enheritaunce, inheritaunce, borrowed from Anglo-Norman, Old French enheritaunce, from enheriter. By surface analysis, inherit + -ance.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The act or state of inheriting; as, the inheritance of an estate; the inheritance of mental or physical qualities.
- noun That which is or may be inherited; that which is derived by an heir from an ancestor or other person; a heritage; a possession which passes by descent.
Etymology [Cf. OF. enheritance.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “inheritance”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details