Definition of Inheritance

In`her´it`ance
n.1.
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.
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.
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.


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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

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