inheritor vs predecessor

inheritor

noun
  • Someone who inherits something; an heir. 

  • A class, etc. that derives from another code element through inheritance. 

predecessor

noun
  • A model or type of machinery or device which precedes the current (or later) one. Usually used to describe an earlier, outdated model. 

  • One who precedes; one who has preceded another in any state, position, office, etc.; one whom another follows or comes after, in any office or position. 

  • A vertex having a directed path to another vertex 

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