Meaning & use
survivorship
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Meanings
noununcountabletechnical
The condition of continuing to live or exist after others have died or failed.
Grammar: No a/an or plural: the study of survivorship.
Patterns
- survivorship of something
- survivorship among something
The survivorship of young seedlings depends on rainfall.
Researchers measured the survivorship of patients over ten years.
High survivorship among newborn chicks showed that the nest was safe.
noununcountablelegal
The right of a surviving joint owner to take full ownership of property after the other owner dies.
Grammar: Often used in the legal phrase right of survivorship.
Patterns
- right of survivorship
The couple bought the house with right of survivorship.
Survivorship means the property passes to the surviving owner.
Joint accounts often come with survivorship rights.
noununcountabletechnical
In statistics and finance, the idea of counting only the cases that lasted, which can distort a conclusion.
Grammar: Often used in the phrase survivorship bias.
Patterns
- survivorship bias
Survivorship bias makes successful companies look more typical than they are.
The fund report suffers from survivorship, since failed funds were dropped.
Ignoring survivorship leads to overconfidence.
Common combinations
- survivorship bias
- Survivorship bias makes failures invisible in the data.
- right of survivorship
- The deed gives them right of survivorship.
- survivorship curve
- The biologist drew a survivorship curve for the herd.
- survivorship benefits
- Survivorship benefits help families after a death.
- high survivorship
- Warm winters led to high survivorship in the colony.
Synonyms and how they differ
- survival
- Survival is the everyday word for staying alive, while survivorship is more technical and is used in statistics or law.
- persistence
- Persistence is continuing over time, but it doesn't involve comparison with those who did not last.
- longevity
- Longevity means a long life, while survivorship is about whether any life continues at all.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: survivorship or survival?
survivorship vs survival
Survival is the general fact of living through something, while survivorship is a technical state or measure used by experts.
Practice
A study of only the companies that still exist today may ignore those that failed. This error is called ____ bias.
Choose one answer.
Survivorship bias means focusing on those that lasted and overlooking those that did not. The other options are not the standard term for this error.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “survivorship”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.