Table of Contents
Definition of Partible Inheritance
(noun) When inheritance is divided more or less equally among children in a family, or all the male children.
Example of Partible Inheritance
Partible Inheritance Pronunciation
Syllabification: par·ti·ble in·her·i·tance
Audio Pronunciation
Phonetic Spelling
- American English – /pAHR-tuh-buhl in-hAIR-uh-tuhns/
- British English – /pAHt-uh-buhl in-hE-ri-tuhns/
International Phonetic Alphabet
- American English: /ˈpɑrtəbəl ɪnˈhɛrətəns/
- British English: /ˈpɑːtəb(ə)l ɪnˈheɹɪt(ə)ns/
Usage Notes
- Plural: partible inheritances
- Partible inheritance is the opposite of ultimogeniture and primogeniture.
- An early form of partible inheritance was practiced in Kent, England called gravelkind.
- Secundogeniture refers to inheritance granted to the second oldest child and tertiogeniture refers to inheritance granted to the third oldest child.
- A type of inheritance.
Related Quotations
- “[F]amilies once provided their children with jobs. Inheritance of the family farm or business was an important factor structuring many young people’s economic opportunities and their relationships with their parents. Nepotism has not totally vanished from modern economies; many parents can ‘pick up the phone‘ and procure opportunities for their children in the businesses of friends and associates. Nevertheless, most parents who want to help their children must now find other ways to do so. Financing their children’s college education, which often delays complete financial and residential independence of those children, is one way parents achieve this end” (Goldscheider and Torr 2007:2571).
- “[Inheritance is b]roadly defined as one’s initial starting point in life based on parental position, includes a set of cumulative nonmerit advantage for all except the poorest of the poor. These include enhanced childhood standards of living, differential access to cultural capital, differential access to social networks of power and influence, infusions of parental capital while parents are still alive, greater health and life expectancy, and the inheritance of bulk estates when parents die” (McNamee and Miller 2013:71).
Additional Information
- Economic Sociology Resources – Books, Journals, and Helpful Links
- Family and Kinship Resources – Books, Journals, and Helpful Links
- Word origin of “inheritance” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com
- Inheritance – Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia: en.wikipedia.org
- Primogeniture – Encyclopedia.com: encyclopedia.com
Related Terms
References
Goldscheider, Frances, and Berna Torr. 2007. “Leaving Home in the Transition to Adulthood.” Pp. 2570-74 in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by G. Ritzer. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
McNamee, Stephen J., and Robert K. Miller, Jr. 2013. The Meritocracy Myth. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Cite the Definition of Partible Inheritance
ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “partible inheritance.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved April 24, 2024 (https://sociologydictionary.org/partible-inheritance/).
APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)
partible inheritance. (2014). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/partible-inheritance/
Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “partible inheritance.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed April 24, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/partible-inheritance/.
MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)
“partible inheritance.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2014. Web. 24 Apr. 2024. <https://sociologydictionary.org/partible-inheritance/>.