stirps
Americannoun
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stirpes
plural
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a stock; family or branch of a family; line of descent.
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Law. a person from whom a family is descended.
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Biology Now Rare. a family, superfamily, or permanent variety.
noun
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genealogy a line of descendants from an ancestor; stock or strain
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botany a race or variety, esp one in which the characters are maintained by cultivation
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of stirps
1675–85; < Latin: rootstock, trunk
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:
But for democracies, they need it not; and they are commonly more quiet, and less subject to sedition, than where there are stirps of nobles.
From The Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon
He was a Jew and circumcised; for they have some few stirps of Jews yet remaining among them, whom they leave to their own religion.
From Ideal Commonwealths by Sir Saint Thomas More
The idea of a distinct stirps or germ for each great class of animals and plants seems to me to destroy an essential feature of the hypothesis.
From The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences by Edward Hitchcock
But we have only to suppose a distinct stirps for each of the classes, and that the developments took place along parallel lines, in order to harmonize the facts with the hypothesis.
From The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences by Edward Hitchcock
They do not refuse the knowledge of other colonies of other stirps and origins, and they even combine in temporary alliance with them.
From April Hopes by William Dean Howells
Per stirpes routes a deceased beneficiary’s portion to their children — in other words, your grandchildren.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 2026
Choosing per stirpes can provide a hedge if a child has children before the beneficiary designation is updated, so that a deceased child’s share will pass on to their descendants.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 2026
Indeed we need not care whether the division per stirpes or per capita, our share is not the less in either case.
From Americanisms and Briticisms with other essays on other isms by Brander Matthews
These became modified into two stirpes: A, that of the worms; and B, that of the sponges.
From Critiques and Addresses by Thomas Henry Huxley
I can't crowd out others as desirable as he for the sake of carrying all of his stirpes.
From The Second Deluge by Garrett Putman Serviss
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.
