inherit
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
to receive money, property, or a title from someone after they die.
to receive property, rank, or a title by legal succession or as a result of a will.
Simple“She inherited a large house from her grandmother last year.”
In context“Upon the sudden passing of his uncle, he inherited the family estate along with the significant debts attached to it.”
UsageOften used with the preposition 'from'.
SynonymsAntonymsdisinherit - 02 B2 Upper Intermediate
to get a physical feature or personality trait from your parents or ancestors.
to receive a characteristic from one's ancestors through genetic transmission.
Simple“He inherited his father's blue eyes and his mother's musical talent.”
In context“Geneticists are studying how certain predispositions for heart disease are inherited across multiple generations.”
Synonyms - 03 B2 Upper Intermediate
to deal with a situation or problem that was left behind by the person who had your job before you.
to receive or take over a situation, often a problematic one, from a predecessor.
Simple“The new manager inherited a lot of problems from the previous team.”
In context“The incoming administration inherited a fragile economy and a series of unresolved diplomatic tensions.”
- 04 C1 Advanced
to receive features or code from another part of a computer program.
to derive existing functionality or attributes from a superclass in object-oriented programming.
Simple“In this code, the 'Car' class will inherit all the features of the 'Vehicle' class.”
In context“By ensuring the subclass inherits from the base component, developers can reuse core logic without duplicating code across the application.”
Synonyms
“Ghasham said: “Many of these trees, most of them, in fact, were inherited from our grandparents and parents.”
“Al-Assad became president in 2000 at the age of 34, inheriting power from his father, Hafez.”
From Middle English enheriten, from Old French enheriter, from Late Latin inhereditare (“make heir”). Displaced native Old English ierfan.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.