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heirship

nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — heir sits at #3,605Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Heirship is the right to inherit what a family holds. Claim heirship, disputed heirship, prove heirship.

It is a formal legal term rather than an everyday one, and proving it is what genealogists are hired for when an estate has no obvious claimant. The h in heir is silent, as it is in honour.

Definitions of heirship

  1. 1nounheirshipThe right to inherit what a family holds.C2

    “The two cousins went to court to settle the question of heirship to the family farm.”

heirship is a right.

Where it comes from

Heir plus -ship, with heir from Latin heres.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ǵʰeh₁-

  2. Latin

    hērēs

  3. Anglo-Norman

    eir

  4. Middle English

    heir

  5. English

    heir

  6. English, today

    heirship

From heir + ship. heir comes from Middle English heir, from Anglo-Norman eir, heir, from Latin hērēs.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Jewellery & Watches

Practise this word

heirship in the wild

  • Most other legal traditions enforce some type of forced heirship, requiring that a testator leave at least some assets to their family, particularly the spouse and children.

    Will contest

  • In this volume, Jolly discussed family law and heirship, the law of things and obligations, offences and penalties, court procedure and customs and traditions.

    Julius Jolly (Indologist)

  • In forced heirship, the estate of a deceased (de cujus) is separated into two portions.

    Forced heirship

  • Forced heirship is generally a feature of civil-law legal systems which do not recognize total freedom of testation, in contrast with common law jurisdictions.

    Forced heirship

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the hērēs family

heirheritagehereditary

heirship — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others