heirloom

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments  · 
“
Every great plantation had its pack of hounds, and fox-hunting, an heirloom from the English colonists, still flourished.

View all »
Definitions (8)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun A valued possession passed down in a family through succeeding generations.
  2. noun An article of personal property included in an inherited estate.
  3. noun A cultivar of a vegetable or fruit that is open-pollinated and is not grown widely for commercial purposes. An heirloom often exhibits a distinctive characteristic such as superior flavor or unusual coloration.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (2)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • It was a family heirloom, and Clem knew his wife would never forgive him if he lost it. —  F ;SF - vol 105 issue 01 - July 2003
  • A dwarf's belt is a family heirloom, a sign of rank and status in the community. —  FSF,February2006
  • The blunderbuss was a family heirloom, and they had always wondered whether Pat could hit anything with it Their driver got a glimpse of the gun. —  143 - Violent Night
  • Preserve the Ivory Shrine as an heirloom, and let those who would engage the votes of the vulgar be I will not record the end of the sentence. —  The Ladies
  • She held it and sighed as if it were an heirloom, and handed it to him. —  The Cosmic Rape
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 74 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English heirlome : heir, heir; see heir + lome, implement; see loom2.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from heir + loom, in its orig. sense of ‘tool, implement,’ extended to mean ‘article.’
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈɛrlum/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a month.

Recently looked up

moleskine · radiative · Fraulein · fructify · Messiah

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

be careful! the razor is razor-sharp! · minty-fresh death threat · please stop sucking the monkeybread · beauregard · unicycle hockey