adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
- ancestrally adverb
- nonancestral adjective
- nonancestrally adverb
- pseudoancestral adjective
- pseudoancestrally adverb
Etymology
Origin of ancestral
1425–75; late Middle English aunce ( s ) trel < Middle French, equivalent to ancestre ancestor + -el -al 1
Explanation
Ancestral things have been around so long that they once belonged to your ancestors, the family members who lived before your grandparents were born. Your ancestral home is the place your great-grandparents or great-great-uncle once lived. You can also use this adjective to describe things that someone inherited from ancestors, like your friend's ancestral beach cottage or your mom's ancestral set of silverware. Ancestral comes from the Late Latin antecessor, "predecessor," or literally "forgoer," from the root antecedere, "to precede."
Vocabulary lists containing ancestral
"Earthquake"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The tribe is now grappling with the sudden loss of jobs, along with the dimming of hope that the culturally sacred fish will be restored to their ancestral waters.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 4, 2026
Now in her 80s, Lami Ezekiel remembers construction crews arriving in her ancestral home in Maitama, as it was destroyed to build Nigeria's capital, Abuja.
From BBC • Apr. 3, 2026
His research took him to the family’s ancestral home in Odessa; to Belle-Epoque Paris; and to the Palais Ephrussi in Vienna, where the netsuke resided until Austria fell under Nazi rule.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 30, 2026
By comparing how these gene clusters are arranged across hundreds of plant genomes and tracing their patterns from ancestral species to modern plants, they were able to detect conserved elements that earlier methods had missed.
From Science Daily • Mar. 14, 2026
As a result, although similar in other respects to ancestral donkeys, onagers have never been domesticated.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
