Difference between Heredity and Hereditary

Most of the times, people fail to differentiate between the terms heredity and hereditary and use them interchangeably for each other. However, this is not the case as both of these terms might be related but they surely carry different meanings. The foremost difference between these terms is that ‘heredity’ is a noun while ‘hereditary’ is an adjective.

Heredity refers to that biological part where a child possesses a single or multiple traits similar to his/her parents. For example, if a child has eyes, ears, nose, colour or skin of his parents it is deemed to be as heredity. On the other hand, hereditary is relevant to heredity but it is more concerned with the transfer of diseases from parents to their children. For example when a child suffers from a disease that was found in any of his parents or forefathers, it is considered to be a hereditary.

Similarly, baldness, colour of skin, eyes or anything of that sort can fall in the category of heredity whereas if something cannot be transferred from parents to offspring, it is not hereditary in nature. Heredity is the phenomenon of transferring things from older generations to newer generations while hereditary is used as a word to explain this process. Hereditary is also defined as the process of explaining heredity.

Not to mention that heredity is the course of having similar eyes, nose, hair, and body features etc as that of your fathers and fore fathers. Subsequently, hereditary is the word that is used to explain the link between all these generations. For example, the fact that ‘sugar’ as a disease can transfer from parents to offspring is called heredity. We can also say that ‘sugar’ as a disease is of hereditary in nature. Similarly, the research shows that breast cancer is not of hereditary, thus it is not a must for offspring to face the same fate as that of their parents.