ancestor

American  

[an-ses-ter, -suh-ster] / ˈæn sɛs tər, -sə stər /

noun

• ancestors
  plural

1. a person from whom one is descended; forebear; progenitor.

2. Biology. the actual or hypothetical form or stock from which an organism has developed or descended.

3. an object, idea, style, or occurrence serving as a prototype, forerunner, or inspiration to a later one.

   The balloon is an ancestor of the modern dirigible.

4. a person who serves as an influence or model for another; one from whom mental, artistic, spiritual, etc., descent is claimed.

   a philosophical ancestor.

5. Law. a person from whom an heir derives an inheritance.

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ancestor British  

/ ˈænsɛstə /

noun

1. (often plural) a person from whom another is directly descended, esp someone more distant than a grandparent; forefather

2. an early type of animal or plant from which a later, usually dissimilar, type has evolved

3. a person or thing regarded as a forerunner of a later person or thing

   the ancestor of the modern camera

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• ancestress
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• ancestors
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of ancestor

1250–1300; Middle English ancestre < Old French (with t developed between s and r ) < Latin antecessor antecessor

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Explanation

An ancestor came before. Your grandmother's grandmother and any relative before her is one of your ancestors. Ante-, a common Latin prefix, means "before." Cedere is Latin for "to go." So, an ancestor is someone who has gone before us. Evolutionary biologists have advanced the theory that all life on earth descends from a common ancestor. Ancestor can also mean "prototype" or "forerunner." The abacus is a distant ancestor of today's supercomputers.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ancestor ancestors

"A reimagined Citroën 2CV should give a big nod to its ancestor - especially on price and design simplicity as well as visual cues," he says.

From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2026

Paul Theroux’s travelogue takes him to the land of an ancestor who arrived by ‘dumb luck and good timing.’

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026

A creature descends to Earth from a sleek spacecraft, still humanoid but far removed from its ancestor species Homo sapiens sapiens.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026

Thanks to an ancestor who wished to never feel the agony of love again, any man the Owens women fall in love with ends up dead.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026

Plant domestication may be defined as growing a plant and thereby, consciously or unconsciously, causing it to change genetically from its wild ancestor in ways making it more useful to human consumers.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

The timing raises the possibility that the enormous environmental changes following the extinction helped create favorable conditions for the ancestors of this unusual fungus.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 26, 2026

He has said that while the role his ancestors played in the slave trade was "deeply, deeply regrettable ... no-one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago".

From Barron's ● Oct. 25, 2026

My great grandfather emigrated from Ireland to Canada in 1923 for some of the same reasons and ideals that Mr. Baker’s ancestors emigrated to the U.S.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2026

Following the singer's death, research by staff at Conwy council's archives suggested Parton's ancestors were from Machynlleth, in Powys, not Conwy as previously thought.

From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026

As Abuela and I freshen up to go to dinner, I think of her words about the ghosts of her Sephardic ancestors.

From "Across So Many Seas" by Ruth Behar

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Related Words

• forebear
• forefather
• founder

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