stirps
Americannoun
plural
stirpes-
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
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.
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 More, Thomas, Sir, Saint
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 Hitchcock, Edward
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 Howells, William Dean
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 New Atlantis by Bacon, Francis
And here we may bring in the 'stock'-dove, as being the 'stock' or stirps of the domestic kinds.
From On the Study of Words by Trench, Richard Chenevix
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.
