Other forms: lineages
A lineage is the line of descent from an ancestor — the chain of parents and children running back through time. A noble lineage, tracing a lineage, a lineage going back four hundred years.
It is a formal and slightly grand word, at home in history, anthropology and biology. In evolutionary biology it is a technical term for a line of descent between species, and that is now among its commonest uses in print. Note the pronunciation: LIN-ee-ij, three syllables, not LINE-age, which is a different word meaning the number of lines of text. Compare ancestry, which is the general word, and pedigree, which is used of animals and of documents.
1nounlineageThe line of descent from an ancestor.
“He traced his lineage back to a family of weavers.”
2nounbiologyIn biology, a line of descent connecting species.
“Birds belong to the same lineage as the theropod dinosaurs.”
lineage is a line of descent.
Latin linea meant a line — originally a linen thread, from linum, flax. A lineage is a thread of descent, and the metaphor is old enough that nobody notices it: the family line is the same picture.
Latin
linea — line
Old French
linage
Middle English
linage
English, today
lineage
From Middle English linage, from Old French linage, from ligne, from Latin linea (“line”); equivalent to line + -age.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA