subclass

A secondary class within a main class.

Noun

  1. A secondary class within a main class.
    • 1959, "Steam's Finest Hour" edited by David P. Morgan, Kalmbach Publishing Co., referring to the R-1 Mountain class loco. These 4-8-2's, of which B&M eventually purchased 18 in various subclasses, could almost haul the...
    • Goffin is a prose text interspersed with short lists of typical terms exemplifying certain sub-classes of Indian English lexis. - 2014, James Lambert, “Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis”, in World Englishes,...
  2. A rank directly below class.
  3. An object class derived from another class (its superclass) from which it inherits a base set of properties and methods.

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *upó Proto-Italic *supo Latin sub Latin sub-der. English sub- Proto-Indo-European *kelh₁-der. Proto-Italic *klāssis Latin classisder. Middle French classebor. English class English subclass From sub- + class.

Forms

subclasses sub-class

Synonyms

subset child class derived class heir class

Antonyms

superclass superset

Hypernyms

class

Derived

intersubclass intrasubclass subclasser

Verb

  1. To create a subclass of (some class).
    • I subclassed the Button class to create a more specialised FancyButton class for my user interface.
  2. To cause (an object) to act as an instance of a subclass (by creating the desired subclass and instantiating an object of this subclass).
    • Since Windows knows about these events, your application should be able to know about them as well. In order to accomplish this, subclass the window of a form or control, intercepting all of its events. - 2000, James D....

Forms

subclasses subclassing subclassed sub-class

Antonyms

unsubclass

Derived

subclassable unsubclass