lineage (n.) Look up lineage at Dictionary.com
late 17c., from Middle English linage "line of descent; an ancestor" (c. 1300), from Old French lignage "descent, extraction, race" (11c.), from ligne "line," from Latin linea "line of descent," literally "string, line, thread" (see line (n.)). The word altered in spelling and pronunciation in early Modern English, apparently by some combined influence of line (n.) and lineal.