telegony
noun
telegony is a noun meaning “The belief that, in the case of siblings from the same mother but different fathers, the second sibling could inherit characteristics from the father…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-E-L-E-G-O-N-Y, and it appears about once in every 79 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does telegony mean?
noun
- 1
The belief that, in the case of siblings from the same mother but different fathers, the second sibling could inherit characteristics from the father of the first.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is telegony?
Telegony appears about once in every 79 million words in written English, the 282,993rd 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).
Telegony in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense inheritance of the characteristics of a non-biological father:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | télégonie |
| German | Telegonie |
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 telegony come from?
From tele- + -gony.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).