Definition of "inheritance" in English

noun

1. The passing of title to an estate upon death.

2. (countable) That which a person is entitled to inherit, by law or testament, such as the part of an estate (i.e., a portion).

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.