# lineage
## English
### Alternative forms

* linage

### Etymology

From Middle English linage, from Old French linage, from ligne, from Latin linea (“line”); equivalent to line +‎ -age.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈlɪn.i.ɪd͡ʒ/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)

### Noun

lineage (countable and uncountable, plural lineages)
* Descent in a line from a common progenitor; progeny; descending line of offspring or ascending line of parentage.
** 1596, [attributed to William Shakespeare; Thomas Kyd], The Raigne of King Edward the Third: […], London: […] [T. Scarlet] for Cuthbert Burby, →OCLC,:Edwards great linage by the mothers ſide, / Fiue hundred yeeres hath helde the ſcepter vp,
** 1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], London: […] Nath[aniel] Ponder […], →OCLC, page 95:[…] ; and therefore they were to me now no more than if they had never been of my Linage; […]
** 1725, Homer, “Book IV”, in [Elijah Fenton], transl., The Odyssey of Homer. […], volume I, London: […] Bernard Lintot, →OCLC, page 146:Accept this welcome to the Spartan court; / The waſte of nature let the feaſt repair, / Then your high lineage and your names declare: / Say from what ſcepter'd anceſtry ye claim, / Recorded eminent in deathleſs fame?
** 1819, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], Tales of My Landlord, Third Series. […], volume II (The Bride of Lammermoor), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 301:To counterbalance those foreign centinels, there mounted guard on the other side of the mirror two stout warders of Scottish lineage; […]
** 1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields:“Ah, but these hens,” answered the young man,—“these hens of aristocratic lineage would scorn to understand the vulgar language of a barn-yard fowl. I prefer to think—and so would Miss Hepzibah—that they recognize the family tone. For you are a Pyncheon?”
** 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC:To produce Tess, fresh from the dairy, as a d’Urberville and a lady, he had felt to be temerarious and risky; hence he had concealed her lineage till such time as, familiarized with worldly ways by a few months’ travel and reading with him, he could take her on a visit to his parents and impart the knowledge while triumphantly producing her as worthy of such an ancient line. It was a pretty lover’s dream, if no more. Perhaps Tess’s lineage had more value for himself than for anybody in the world beside.
** 2011 July 19, Ella Davies, “Stick insects survive one million years without sex”, in BBC‎:They traced the ancient lineages of two species to reveal the insects' lengthy history of asexual reproduction.
** 2023, Ulf Mattsson, Controlling Privacy and the Use of Data Assets‎, volume 2, CRC Press, →ISBN:Data lineage is not a new concept, but modern business requirements far outstrip the siloed, limited features of the past. […] The demand for data lineage comes from both technical and business users, including data architects, data engineers, data stewards, analysts and data scientists, as well as business managers, compliance professionals, and technical specialists.
* (advertising) A number of lines of text in a column.
** 1927, William Leonard Crum, Advertising Fluctuations, Seasonal and Cyclical:Total newspaper advertising lineage in the North Atlantic region
** 1981 December 1, Ronnie Allen, “The Herald: Shunning and Insulting”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 20, page 4:These are mere excerpts of longer pieces by Sullivan on Boy George, and I have left out more pieces because of the limits of space. Let me add, the lineage in Sullivan's column devoted to Boy George in 1984 exceeds the lineage in the rest of the Herald devoted to all news of gays and lesbians in the same period of time.
* A fee or rate paid per line of text.

#### Derived terms

* lineage temple
* lineage zone

#### Related terms

* line
* lineal
* linear

#### See also

* genealogy

### References

* “lineage”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* “lineage”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
* linage, lineage at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.