inheritance

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Recorded since 1473, inherit + -ance. More at inherit.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɪnˈhɛɹətəns/
  • (file)

Noun

inheritance (countable and uncountable, plural inheritances)

  1. The passing of title to an estate upon death.
  2. (countable) That which a person is entitled to inherit, by law or testament.
  3. (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.
  4. (biology, genetic algorithms) The biological attributes passed hereditarily from ancestors to their offspring.
  5. (programming, object-oriented programming) The mechanism whereby parts of a superclass are available to instances of its subclass.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

References

  • inheritance” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
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