inheritance
Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word inheritance. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word inheritance, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say inheritance in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word inheritance you have here. The definition of the word inheritance will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofinheritance, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English enheritaunce, inheritaunce, borrowed from Anglo-Norman, Old French enheritaunce, from enheriter. Equivalent to inherit + -ance.
Pronunciation
Noun
inheritance (countable and uncountable, plural inheritances)
- The passing of title to an estate upon death.
- (countable) That which a person is entitled to inherit, by law or testament, such as the part of an estate (i.e., a portion).
- (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.
- (biology, genetic algorithms) The biological attributes passed hereditarily from ancestors to their offspring.
- (programming, object-oriented programming) The mechanism whereby parts of a superclass are available to instances of its subclass.
Hyponyms
Hyponyms (computing)
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
passing of title
|
that which a person is entitled to inherit
| |||||||
biological attributes passed to offspring
|
programming: mechanism for making parts of superclass available to subclass
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
Further reading
- Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “inheritance”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.