disinherit
/ˌdɪsɪnˈhɛɹɪt/verb
disinherit is a verb meaning “To exclude from inheritance; to disown” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-I-S-I-N-H-E-R-I-T, and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does disinherit mean?
verb
- 1
To exclude from inheritance; to disown.
Excuses for disinheriting people, that we swear we're not making up
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce disinherit?
- /ˌdɪsɪnˈhɛɹɪt/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-disinherit.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of disinherit
- disinherits present, singular, he/she/it
- disinheriting participle, present
- disinherited participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is disinherit?
Disinherit appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 103,949th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Disinherit in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense to exclude from inheritance:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | déshériter |
| German | enterben |
| Portuguese | deserdar |
| Spanish | desheredar |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does disinherit come from?
From Middle English disenheriten, equivalent to dis- + inherit.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).