inheritance vs legacy

inheritance

noun
  • The act or mechanism of inheriting; the state of having inherited 

  • The mechanism whereby parts of a superclass are available to instances of its subclass. 

  • The passing of title to an estate upon death. 

  • That which a person is entitled to inherit, by law or testament. 

  • The biological attributes passed hereditarily from ancestors to their offspring. 

legacy

noun
  • Something inherited from a predecessor or the past. 

  • The descendant of an alumnus. 

  • Money or property bequeathed to someone in a will. 

adj
  • Left over from the past; no longer current. 

How often have the words inheritance and legacy occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )