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What is "heirloom"

Crossword clues for heirloom

heirloom
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
heirloom
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Bagpipes are considered family heirlooms and the pipers provide their own.
▪ For Armstrong aficionados, a golden heirloom.
▪ Furthermore, they did not retain these primal practices merely as heirlooms.
▪ Old heirloom lace was at her throat and wrists.
▪ The antis say it's an atomic eyesore ... a dangerous heirloom to leave future generations.
▪ The blade Fearfrost is the heirloom of the Tzarinas of Kislev.
▪ The spacious dining room is often sunny and is filled with antiques and heirlooms.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Heirloom

Heirloom \Heir"loom`\, n. [Heir + loom, in its earlier sense of implement, tool. See Loom the frame.] Any furniture, movable, or personal chattel, which by law or special custom descends to the heir along with the inheritance; any piece of personal property that has been in a family for several generations.

Woe to him whose daring hand profanes The honored heirlooms of his ancestors.
--Moir.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
heirloom

early 15c., ayre lome, a hybrid from heir + loom in its original but now otherwise obsolete sense of "implement, tool." Technically, some piece of property that by will or custom passes down with the real estate.

Wiktionary
heirloom

n. 1 A valued possession that has been pass down through the generations. 2 A crop variety that has been passed down through generations of farmers by seed saving and cultivation.

WordNet
heirloom

  1. n. (law) any property that is considered by law or custom as inseparable from an inheritance is inherited with that inheritance

  2. something that has been in a family for generations

Wikipedia
Heirloom

In popular usage, an heirloom is something, perhaps an antique or some kind of jewelry, that has been passed down for generations through family members.

The term originated with the historical principle of an heirloom in English law, a chattel which by immemorial usage was regarded as annexed by inheritance to a family estate. Loom originally meant a tool. Such genuine heirlooms were almost unknown by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Heirloom (disambiguation)

Heirloom may refer to:

  • Heirloom, an item passed down through generations
  • Heirloom plant, a cultivar grown during earlier periods of human history
    • Heirloom tomato, an heirloom cultivar of tomato
  • Heirloom (TV series), the Anglia Television series
  • The Heirloom, a 2005 Taiwan ghost movie
  • Heirloom, a track on the album Vespertine by Björk
  • The Heirloom Project, a collection of traditional Unix software adapted to modern standards

Usage examples of "heirloom".

Graves studied the vast thing and saw in her mind the glyphic arts as practiced at sea: compacted kelp shaved and whittled into little heirloom boxes, miniature portrait busts of children.

Lingeringly did Clarence gaze upon the rich velvet, the costly mirrors, the motley paintings of a hundred ancestors, and the antique cabinets, containing, among the most hoarded relics of the Mordaunt race, curiosities which the hereditary enthusiasm of a line of cavaliers had treasured as the most sacred of heirlooms, and which, even to the philosophical mind of Mordaunt, possessed a value he did not seek too minutely to analyze.

It was easiest to accept my explanation that the ironmongery was heirlooms and that my poor friend, besides being stunted, was deaf-mute.

But chef Tripp Mauldin, previously at Michael Mina and the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, who arrived in mid-2005, has upped the culinary ante in a big way, offering fabulous crispy roast chicken with summer corn, chanterelles, lardoons, baby potatoes, and jus, outstanding burgers, and tasty seafood such as King salmon with arugula salad, heirloom tomatoes, olives, basil, and parmesan.

The ancient heirloom, the buckle worn by his Thwait ancestors, was somehow drawn to the magic!

Otherwise I continue to rejoice in your ancient spiritual heirloom, and look forward to the day when we can continue to investigate our ancestors through your autogenic clairvoyance.

The age of the tomb, however, implied it had preceded the advent of the noble bastardy which lifted the Scorpioni to possession of this ground -or, more strange, that the sepulchre had been brought with them from some other spot, a brooding heirloom.

His patrimonial acres and heirlooms remain indeed untouched, because the court of chancery have deemed it necessary to appoint a receiver to secure their faithful transmission to the next heir.

I remember once when we were doing science in school I took the jars for me and Elmer to catch pollywogs in, and you raised holy hell about taking family heirlooms out of the house.

Santa Beata Tagliapietra,--that devoted daughter of the Church,--and the Lady Beata herself had given the precious heirloom out of the treasures of the chapel of their house to her beloved Lady Marina.

He left it as an heirloom to his son, and the Incas had it down to the time of Inca Yupanqui.

And while the assortment of Masterson heirlooms the current curator has so lovingly and painstakingly collected is impressive, there is only one item unique to Masterson Manor, one item which has drawn the museologist along the twisted lanes and remote byways that lead to Trecombe: The Masterson Bed.

One bore an heirloom sword, but the others had axes, pikes which looked as if they had been handed down for generations, pitchforks and cudgels.

It was possible that the Montegeau rubies Faith Donovan was designing into a necklace had come from one or more of the long, long list of stolen heirlooms, but he doubted it.

And of all the heirlooms of the earlier times in Yankeeland, what household memorial is clustered round about with more sacred and touching associations than the spinning-wheel!