Pedigree

How to spell pedigree

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pedigree

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pedigree mean?

1. nounA recorded line of descent or ancestry, especially a distinguished or purebred one.
2. nounA person's or thing's history of achievement or proven quality.

Pedigree in a sentence

• The breeder kept careful records of each puppy's pedigree.

• The candidate's academic pedigree made her the obvious choice for the post.

• His impressive pedigree included three generations of champion show horses.

• The firm has a strong pedigree in delivering large infrastructure projects.

Where does pedigree come from?

Language of origin: French

Pedigree comes from the Anglo-French phrase 'pé de grue', which literally meant 'foot of a crane'. The branching, three-pronged mark that medieval scribes used to show lines of descent on a family tree looked just like the splayed foot of a crane, so the bird's name was borrowed for the diagram itself. English took the word over in the early 1400s, at first writing it in many odd ways such as 'pedegru' and 'petygru' before the modern spelling settled. From naming the chart it shifted to naming the thing the chart records: a line of ancestry, especially a documented and distinguished one. Knowing the hidden 'crane's foot' inside the word helps explain why it ends in the unexpected '-gree' rather than the '-grey' or '-gry' a speller might guess.

How the word is built

• ped- (foot)
• -i-
• -gree (from grue: crane); from the crane's-foot shape of a genealogical chart