These words indicate property willed to someone, or anything handed down from the past. Inheritance is the most general of these. At its strictest, it refers to both the real estate and personal property (including sums of money) left to someone in a will. This is usually acquired upon the death of the person who made the will, although sometimes it may be reserved until the one receiving it reaches a certain age or meets certain conditions. Occasionally, the word may be used to indicate real estate alone, especially a property or family home. In a more general sense, the word refers to anything handed down by one’s predecessors, from hereditary traits to cultural traditions: the inheritance of a recessive gene from his mother’s side the precious inheritance of freedom guaranteed us by the Constitution. Bequest , by contrast, functions solely in terms of willed personal property, often a sum of money, that comes to one by formal declaration upon the death of the donor: stipulating that a number of small bequests were to go to several close friends.

At their strictest, legacy and heritage contrast, since legacy refers like bequest to a willed gift of money or personal property, while heritage refers, more like inheritance , to real property that goes by right to an heir. More significantly, however, both words are similar in referring generally to anything that has come down from the past. In this use, legacy is likely to refer to abstract things such as qualities, attitudes, principles or rights: the legacy of race hatred left to America by the institution of slavery; a new honesty about sexual matters, the legacy of Freud, Ellis and others. Heritage has a particular pertinence to enduring concrete things such as monuments, buildings or natural resources: our squandered heritage of untainted streams and virgin forest land; the cathedrals that are part of England’s invaluable heritage .

In their strict senses, patrimony refers to an estate, usually real, inherited from one’s father, while birthright can refer to property, real or personal, to which someone, especially a first-born son, is entitled by birth: Esau’s selling of his birthright for a mess of pottage. Much more commonly, however, both words are used in more general senses. Here, patrimony can refer to anything derived from one’s father or ancestors; thus, the word is a restriction of the general sense of legacy , referring to family or ancestral traditions: taking up the Barry more patrimony of theatrical accomplishment. Sometimes, however, the word is used even more generally, like inheritance : the rival patrimonies , still viable, of Athenian democracy and Spartan authoritarianism. In this context, birthright is used like legacy , though it is more emphatically reserved for qualities, attitudes, principles and especially rights to which every human being is thought entitled: our inalienable birthright of free speech; a U.N. declaration naming four specific freedoms as every person’s birthright .