Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Belonging to or being in the direct line of descent from an ancestor.
- adjective Derived from or relating to a particular line of descent; hereditary.
- adjective Linear.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Of or pertaining to a line or length; extending in a line; involving the single dimension of length: as, lineal measure; a lineal foot.
- Proceeding in a direct or unbroken line; hereditary; unbroken in course: distinguished from
collateral: as, lineal descent; lineal succession. - Pertaining or relating to direct descent; hereditary in quality or character; having an ancestral basis or right.
- Allied by direct descent.
- Of or pertaining to the line or officers of the line in the army or navy.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Descending in a direct line from an ancestor; hereditary; derived from ancestors; -- opposed to
collateral . - adjective Inheriting by direct descent; having the right by direct descent to succeed (to).
- adjective Composed of lines; delineated.
- adjective In the direction of a line; of or pertaining to a line; measured on, or ascertained by, a line; linear.
- adjective the measure of length; -- usually written
linear measure .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective family Of a family relationship that includes mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons, etc. as opposed to
collateral .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective arranged in a line
- adjective in a straight unbroken line of descent from parent to child
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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It has rarely happened that a crown has been transmitted from father to son, in lineal descent, for seventeen reigns.
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Yet after the fortune of his posterity, Seljuk became the thirty-fourth in lineal descent from the great Afrasiab, emperor of
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206
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After the death of the younger Romanus, the fourth in lineal descent of the Basilian race, his widow Theophania successively married Nicephorus Phocas and his assassin John Zimisces, the two heroes of the age.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206
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Theodoric the Ostrogoth, the fourteenth in lineal descent of the royal line of the Amali, 1 was born in the neighborhood of Vienna 2 two years after the death of Attila.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206
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99 Two hundred families † supply, in lineal descent, the second branch of English legislature, which maintains, between the king and commons, the balance of the constitution.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206
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It became the term people used to name their lineal affiliation with their father's maternal line.
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Its parents may think themselves hardly treated when they are called lineal successors of Tony Fire-the-faggot: {263} but, degenerate though they be, such is their ancestry.
A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) Augustus De Morgan 1838
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(The National Guard, which was conceived and established as a kind of lineal descendant of the colonial era militias, has been shipped off to fight in Iraq, leaving the country largely undefended, whether against natural disaster or foreign attack.)
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"Imagine an art made up entirely of these quintessences of movement-values and you will have something that holds the same relation to representation that music holds to speech -- and this art exists and is called lineal decoration.
Promenades of an Impressionist James Huneker 1890
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I am aware that the severity indicated by the numbers and fractions on the Richter scale are not lineal, but it has been many years since I saw the definitions of that scale, and I did not feel like doing the research again for my last post.
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