| n. | 1. | |
| 1. | The act or state of inheriting; | |
| 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. | |
| 3. | A permanent or valuable possession or blessing, esp. one received by gift or without purchase; a benefaction. | |
| 4. | Possession; ownership; acquisition. | |
| 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. |
| Noun | 1. | inheritance - hereditary succession to a title or an office or property Synonyms: heritage |
| 2. | inheritance - that which is inherited; a title or property or estate that passes by law to the heir on the death of the owner Synonyms: heritage | |
| 3. | inheritance - (genetics) attributes acquired via biological heredity from the parents Synonyms: hereditary pattern | |
| 4. | inheritance - any attribute or immaterial possession that is inherited from ancestors; "my only inheritance was my mother's blessing"; "the world's heritage of knowledge" Synonyms: heritage |
INHERITANCE, estates. A perpetuity in lands to a man and his heirs; or it is
the right to succeed to the estate of a person who died intestate. Dig. 50,
16, 24. The term is applied to lands.
2. The property which is inherited is called an inheritance.
3. The term inheritance includes not only lands and tenements which
have been acquired by descent, but also every fee simple or fee tail, which
a person has acquired by purchase, may be said to be an inheritance, because
the purchaser's heirs may inherit it. Litt. s. 9.
4. Estates of inheritance are divided into inheritance absolute, or fee
simple; and inheritance limited, one species of which is called fee tail.
They are also divided into corporeal, as houses and lands and incorporeal,
commonly called incorporeal hereditaments. (q. v.) 1 Cruise, Dig. 68; Sw.
163; Poth. des Retraits, n. 2 8.
5. Among the civilians, by inheritance is understood the succession to
all the rights of the deceased. It is of two kinds, 1 . That which arises by
testament, when the testator gives his succession to a particular person;
and, 2. That which arises by operation of law, which is called succession ab
intestat. Hein. Lec. El. Sec. 484, 485.
| (programming, object-oriented) | 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. |