heredity

Noun

Meaning

Hereditary transmission of the physical and psychical qualities of parents to their offspring; the biological law by which living beings tend to repeat their characteristics in their descendants. See Pangenesis.

Source: Webster's dictionary

Synonyms

genetic endowment constitution family line blood origin birth stock transmission background evolution gene succession heritage descent
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Antonyms

end last origin root ending conclusion
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Hypernyms

property biological process organic process

Hyponyms

inheritance hereditary pattern

Phrases with the word

study of heredity

Examples

Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us. Harry Emerson Fosdick

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other. Laurence J. Peter

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life. Dale Carnegie

A mutation in a DNA molecule within a chromosome of a skin cell in my index finger has no influence on heredity. Fingers are not involved, at least directly, in the propagation of the species. Carl Sagan

Both of these branches of evolutionary science, are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation. Ernst Haeckel

Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery. James Mark Baldwin

Close letter words and terms

hereditary stomatocytosis hereditary tendencies hereditary unit heredoalcoholism heredoc heredodegenerative