bloodline
Americannoun
-
bloodlines
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of bloodline
Explanation
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."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Sandford—to firmly establish that birthplace, rather than bloodline or race, dictated U.S. citizenship.
From Barron's ● Jun. 30, 2026
"Kim Jong Un became heir in his 20s despite having no achievements, solely because of the Paektu bloodline," Ryu Hyun-woo, an exiled North Korea diplomat, wrote in his book, Kim Jong Un's Secret Vault.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2026
The “Game of Thrones” prequel boasts many dragons, most of them bound to the Targaryen royal bloodline.
From Salon ● Jun. 24, 2026
That trust showed a $500,000 transfer from my father, explicitly described as a gift, made at the same time my father was supposedly creating his bloodline trust.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 2, 2026
“It's a family protector. An ancient being that's been with our bloodline since like forever.”
From "The Marvellers" by Dhonielle Clayton
"You're losing bloodlines as well. So it's all got an impact. It has to be thought about."
From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026
If you dare to ask, sorry, their recipes for pizza dough and tomato sauce are secret, only passed down along the founders’ bloodlines.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
That image is a family portrait, albeit one crisscrossed with cruelty and deception, including fraudulent bloodlines.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
“When it was introduced, every breeder jumped on it for its bloodlines because of its fragrance and foliage,” Carruth said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 25, 2025
Atlanta—the Imperial City of the KKK’s Invisible Empire, in Klan jargon—was also home to Stetson Kennedy, a thirty- year-old man with the bloodlines of a Klansman but a temperament that ran opposite.
From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
