inheritance
/ɪnˈhɛɹɪtəns/noun
inheritance is spelled I-N-H-E-R-I-T-A-N-C-E. The wrong spelling people search most is inheritence: about 140 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 28 of all searches for the word. Inheritance is a noun meaning “The passing of title to an estate upon death”. The plural of inheritance is inheritances.
How many letters and syllables are in inheritance?
| Letters | 11: I-N-H-E-R-I-T-A-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 6.3 times per million words; the 9,594th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, inheritence, about 140 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell inheritance?
Inheritance is spelled I-N-H-E-R-I-T-A-N-C-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 28 of the searches for inheritance in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is inheritance?
Inheritance appears 6.3 times per million words in written English, the 9,594th 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).
How do you pronounce inheritance?
- /ɪnˈhɛɹɪtəns/
- /ɪnˈhɛɹɪˌtəns/
Inheritance has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-inheritance.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of inheritance
- inheritances plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does inheritance mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The passing of title to an estate upon death.
- 2
That which a person is entitled to inherit, by law or testament, such as the part of an estate (i.e., a portion).
- 3
The act or mechanism of inheriting; the state of having inherited.
The Indo-European languages share various similarities as a result of their inheritance from a common ancestor.
- 4
The biological attributes passed hereditarily from ancestors to their offspring.
- 5
The mechanism whereby parts of a superclass are available to instances of its subclass.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Inheritance in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Erbschaft , Erbe, Erbteil |
| Portuguese | herança |
| Spanish | herencia, heredad |
| French | héritage |
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 inheritance come from?
Inherited from Middle English enheritaunce, inheritaunce, borrowed from Anglo-Norman, Old French enheritaunce, from enheriter. By surface analysis, inherit + -ance.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).