'Inheritance' definitions:
Definition of 'inheritance'
(from WordNet)
noun
Hereditary succession to a title or an office or property [syn: inheritance, heritage]
noun
That which is inherited; a title or property or estate that passes by law to the heir on the death of the owner [syn: inheritance, heritage]
noun
(genetics) attributes acquired via biological heredity from the parents [syn: inheritance, hereditary pattern]
noun
Any attribute or immaterial possession that is inherited from ancestors; "my only inheritance was my mother's blessing"; "the world's heritage of knowledge" [syn: inheritance, heritage]
Definition of 'Inheritance'
From: GCIDE
- Inheritance \In*her"it*ance\, n. [Cf. OF. enheritance.] [1913 Webster]
- 1. The act or state of inheriting; as, the inheritance of an estate; the inheritance of mental or physical qualities. [1913 Webster]
- 2. 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. [1913 Webster]
- When the man dies, let the inheritance Descend unto the daughter. --Shak. [1913 Webster]
- 3. A permanent or valuable possession or blessing, esp. one received by gift or without purchase; a benefaction. [1913 Webster]
- To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. --1 Pet. i. 4. [1913 Webster]
- 4. Possession; ownership; acquisition. "The inheritance of their loves." --Shak. [1913 Webster]
- To you th' inheritance belongs by right Of brother's praise; to you eke 'longs his love. --Spenser. [1913 Webster]
- 5. (Biol.) Transmission and reception by animal or plant generation. [1913 Webster]
- 6. (Law) A perpetual or continuing right which a man and his heirs have to an estate; an estate which a man has by descent as heir to another, or which he may transmit to another as his heir; an estate derived from an ancestor to an heir in course of law. --Blackstone. [1913 Webster]
- Note: The word inheritance (used simply) is mostly confined to the title to land and tenements by a descent. --Mozley & W. [1913 Webster]
- Men are not proprietors of what they have, merely for themselves; their children have a title to part of it which comes to be wholly theirs when death has put an end to their parents' use of it; and this we call inheritance. --Locke. [1913 Webster]
Synonyms of 'inheritance'
From: Moby Thesaurus
- allele,
- allelomorph,
- Altmann theory,
- attested copy,
- bequeathal,
- bequest,
- birth,
- birthright,
- borough-English,
- character,
- chromatid,
- chromatin,
- chromosome,
- codicil,
- coheirship,
- coparcenary,
- De Vries theory,
- determinant,
- determiner,
- devise,
- diathesis,
- DNA,
- endowment,
- entail,
- eugenics,
- factor,
- Galtonian theory,
- gavelkind,
- gene,
- genesiology,
- genetic code,
- genetics,
- heirloom,
- heirship,
- hereditability,
- hereditament,
- heredity,
- heritability,
- heritable,
- heritage,
- heritance,
- inborn capacity,
- incorporeal hereditament,
- inheritability,
- law of succession,
- legacy,
- line of succession,
- matrocliny,
- Mendelianism,
- Mendelism,
- mode of succession,
- patrimony,
- patrocliny,
- pharmacogenetics,
- postremogeniture,
- primogeniture,
- probate,
- property,
- recessive character,
- replication,
- reversion,
- RNA,
- succession,
- testament,
- ultimogeniture,
- Verworn theory,
- Weismann theory,
- Weismannism,
- Wiesner theory,
- will