agnaticadj.

1715 J. Morrice et al. tr. H. Grotius Of Rights War & Peace II. vii. 193 The Younger Grandchild by a Son, is to be preferr'd before the Elder by a Daughter, which is true in the Lineal Agnatic Succession [L. in lineali cognatica successione], but not in the Hereditary, unless authorized by some special Law.

1747 T. Carte Gen. Hist. Eng. I. 365 A lineal agnatic succession.

1769 S. Hallifax Heads Course Lect. Rom. Civil Law ix. 63 Agnatic Succession has place in Descents, by the laws of England; which, in Collateral inheritances, always prefer the Male stocks before the female.

1823 Retrosp. Rev. 8 199 Even under the Norman institutions, the succession to the throne was never an absolute inheritance by fixed agnatic descent.

1880 J. Muirhead tr. Gaius Institutes ii. 93 The agnatic [L. agnatus] curator of a lunatic is empowered..to alienate his ward's property.

1915 J. W. Powell in A. Kocourek & J. H. Wigmore Primitive & Anc. Legal Inst. ii. ix. 189 An agnatic clan consist[s] of a brother-group and a sister-group in each of the generations represented in the clan, and the kinship is reckoned only through males.

1957 P. Worsley Trumpet shall Sound i. 18 The framework of Fijian social organisation was a system of agnatic descent-groups.

a2005 R. R. Davies Lords & Lordship (2009) v. 147 Medieval aristocratic England was not an agnatic society, in the sense that medieval Wales was.