 4 definitions found
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
inheritance
noun
1: hereditary succession to a title or an office or property
[syn: {heritage}]
2: that which is inherited; a title or property or estate that
passes by law to the heir on the death of the owner [syn:
{heritage}]
3: (genetics) attributes acquired via biological heredity from
the parents [syn: {hereditary pattern}]
4: 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: {heritage}]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Inheritance \In*her"it*ance\, noun [Cf. OF. enheritance.]
1. The act or state of inheriting; as, the inheritance of an
estate; the inheritance of mental or physical qualities.
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.
When the man dies, let the inheritance
Descend unto the daughter. --Shak.
3. A permanent or valuable possession or blessing, esp. one
received by gift or without purchase; a benefaction.
To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and
that fadeth not away. --1 Pet. i. 4.
4. Possession; ownership; acquisition. ''The inheritance of
their loves.'' --Shak.
To you th' inheritance belongs by right
Of brother's praise; to you eke 'longs his love.
--Spenser.
5. (Biol.) Transmission and reception by animal or plant
generation.
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.
Note: The word inheritance (used simply) is mostly confined
to the title to land and tenements by a descent.
--Mozley & W.
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.
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
70 Moby Thesaurus words for "inheritance":
Altmann theory, DNA, De Vries theory, Galtonian theory,
Mendelianism, Mendelism, RNA, Verworn theory, Weismann theory,
Weismannism, Wiesner theory, allele, allelomorph, attested copy,
bequeathal, bequest, birth, birthright, borough-English, character,
chromatid, chromatin, chromosome, codicil, coheirship, coparcenary,
determinant, determiner, devise, diathesis, endowment, entail,
eugenics, factor, 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,
mode of succession, patrimony, patrocliny, pharmacogenetics,
postremogeniture, primogeniture, probate, property,
recessive character, replication, reversion, succession, testament,
ultimogeniture, will
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:
inheritance
In {object-oriented
programming}, the ability to derive new {classes} from
existing classes. A {derived class} (or "subclass") inherits
the {instance variables} and {methods} of the "{base class}"
(or "superclass"), and may add new instance variables and
methods. New methods may be defined with the same names as
those in the base class, in which case they override the
original one.
For example, bytes might belong to the class of integers for
which an add method might be defined. The byte class would
inherit the add method from the integer class.
See also {Liskov substitution principle}, {multiple
inheritance}.
(2000-10-10)
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