ancestor
/ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.49 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather; a forebear.
noun
An earlier type; a progenitor.
noun
One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.
noun
One who had the same role or function in former times.
verb
To be an ancestor of.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine. The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless."
- "This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse."
- "Some of the descendants of this cyclopean ancestor left their burrows and started to swim."
- "The Magpies are unbeaten and enjoying their best run since 1994, although few would have thought the class of 2011 would come close to emulating their ancestors."
- "Her own grandfather had been a Virginian, a descendant of Pocahontas, of course, Pocahontas having been created by Divine Providence for the specific purpose of ancestoring Virginians."
- "But he could have completed it: Lucas Quintus Carothers McCaslin Beauchamp. Last surviving sone and child of Tomey's Terrel and Tennie Beauchamp. March 17, 1874 except that there was no need: not Lucius Quintus &c &c &c, but Lucas Quintus, not refusing to be called Lucius, because he simply eliminated that word from the name; not denying, declining the name itself, because he used three quarters of it; but simply taking the name and changing, altering it, making it no longer the white man's but his own , by himself composed, himself selfprogenitive and nominate, by himself ancestored, as, for all the old ledgers recorded to the contrary, old Carothers himself was"
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ent- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₂énts Proto-Indo-European *-i Proto-Indo-European *h₂énti Proto-Italic *anti Latin ante Latin ante- Latin cedo Proto-Indo-European *-tōr Proto-Italic *-tōr Latin -tor Latin antecessor Anglo-Norman auncestrebor. Middle English auncestre English ancestor From Middle English ancestre, auncestre, ancessour; the first forms from Old French ancestre (modern French ancêtre), from the Latin nominative antecessor (“one who goes before”); the last form from Old French ancessor, from Latin antecessōrem, accusative of antecessor, from antecēdō (“to go before”) + -tor (“-er”), from ante- (“before”) + cēdō (“to go”). See cede, and compare with antecessor.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/
- British English: /ˈæn.sɛs.tə/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Biology.