Other forms: inheritances, inherit, inherited, heir
An inheritance is what comes to you when somebody dies — the house, the money, the box of photographs nobody else wanted.
It is not only money. You can inherit a business, a name, a quarrel, a nose. Biology borrowed the word wholesale: you inherit your eye colour the same way you inherit a farm. The debts come too, which is why an inheritance is sometimes refused. The verb is inherit, the person is an heir, and the adjective for the biological sense is inherited or hereditary.
1nounlegacyMoney or property received from somebody who has died.~42%
“He spent the whole inheritance in four years.”
2nouninheritanceA quality or condition passed down through a family.~39%
“The illness was an inheritance from her mother's side.”
3nounanythingAnything handed down from those who came before.~19%
“A language is an inheritance nobody chooses.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 141 sentences found in the wild and placed 123 of them on a sense (18 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
inheritance is a kind of property.
in-HERITA-nce → HERITAge
The lawyer reads the will. The heritage passes across the table: a house, a clock, and a debt, in that order.
hooks ontoheritage
It shares its middle with heritage, and both come from Latin heres, an heir. What you inherit and what you call your heritage are the same word wearing different clothes.
Old French
enheritaunce
Middle English
enheritaunce
English, today
inheritance
Middle English enheritaunce, inheritaunce, borrowed from Anglo-Norman -, Old French enheritaunce, from enheriter. by surface analysis, en + inherit + ance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA