Definition of inherit
Etymology
Old French enheriter, from Late Latin inhereditare ("make heir").
Pronunciation
Verb
to inherit (third-person singular simple present inherits, present participle inheriting, simple past and past participle inherited)
- (transitive) To take possession of as a right (especially in Biblical translations).
Your descendants will inherit the earth.
- (transitive) To receive (property or a title etc), by legal succession or bequest after the previous owner's death.
After Grandad died, I inherited the house.
- (transitive) (biology) To receive a characteristic from one's ancestors by genetic transmission.
Let's hope the baby inherits his mother's looks and his father's intelligence.
- (transitive) To derive from people or conditions previously in force.
This country has inherited an invidious class culture.
- (intransitive) to come into an inheritance.
Lucky old Daniel - his parents were both killed, and he's inherited.
- (computing, programming, transitive) To derive (existing functionality) from a superclass.
ModalWindow inherits all the properties and methods of Window.
- (computing, programming, transitive) To derive a new class from (a superclass).
* 2006, Daniel Solis, Illustrated C# 2005
For example, the following two code segments, from different assemblies, show how easy it is to inherit a class from another assembly.
Derived terms
References:
- Wiktionary. Published under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
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