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bloodline

/ˌblʌdˈlaɪn/
/ˈblʌdlaɪn/
IPA guide

Other forms: bloodlines

Your bloodline is your heritage or ancestry. In other words, your bloodline includes your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on.

You might talk about the bloodline of a show dog, bragging about the pedigree of your funny-looking terrier. Sometime a horse's bloodline is also a selling point, particularly when someone is betting on a race horse. You have a bloodline too, although the word more often describes the heritage of a famous or royal family. The Old English root word blod, means "blood." By the 13th century, blood also meant "family" or "heritage."

Definitions of bloodline
  1. noun
    ancestry of a purebred animal
    synonyms: pedigree
    see moresee less
    type of:
    ancestry, derivation, filiation, lineage
    inherited properties shared with others of your bloodline
  2. noun
    the descendants of one individual
    see moresee less
    types:
    family, family line, folk, kinfolk, kinsfolk, phratry, sept
    people descended from a common ancestor
    side
    a family line of descent
    people
    members of a family line
    homefolk
    the people of your home locality (especially your own family)
    house
    aristocratic family line
    dynasty
    a sequence of powerful leaders in the same family
    gens, name
    family based on male descent
    type of:
    family tree, genealogy
    successive generations of kin
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