stirps

American  

[sturps] / stɜrps /

noun

plural

stirpes

1. a stock; family or branch of a family; line of descent.

2. Law. a person from whom a family is descended.

3. Biology Now Rare. a family, superfamily, or permanent variety.

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stirps British  

/ stɜːps /

noun

1. genealogy a line of descendants from an ancestor; stock or strain

2. botany a race or variety, esp one in which the characters are maintained by cultivation

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Etymology

Origin of stirps

1675–85; < Latin: rootstock, trunk

Example Sentences

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

I must not omit the inscription on the south front: "Omnipotens faxet, stirps Sunderlandia sedes Incolet has placide, et tueatur jura parentum, Lite vacans, donec fluctus formica marinos Ebibat et totum testudo perambulet orbem!"

From Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. by Bell, George

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 Hitchcock, Edward

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

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

Related Words

• clan
• descent
• genealogy
• origin
• pedigree