inheritance

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɪnˈhɛɹɪtəns/
  • (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

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References

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