ancestry
Americannoun
plural
ancestriesnoun
-
lineage or descent, esp when ancient, noble, or distinguished
-
ancestors collectively
Etymology
Origin of ancestry
1300–50; Middle English, equivalent to ancestre ancestor + -y 3; replacing Middle English aunce ( s ) trie < Anglo-French
Explanation
Have a family tree hanging on the wall? Then you know a bit about your ancestry, or family history and lineage. If you think ancestry sounds like ancestor, then you're headed in the right direction. Ancestry is basically a history of ancestors, a trail of where your family started and all the descendants that followed. But ancestry goes much further than just your great-great-grand uncle's brother. You can also use the word ancestry to refer to the background of things other than people — such as the ancestry of a building or the ancestry of a nation.
Vocabulary lists containing ancestry
It's All in the Family
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Central America and the Caribbean - Introductory
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Central America and the Caribbean - Middle School and High School
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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.
This variant is relatively common, found in about 40% of people of European descent and 38% of people with Middle Eastern ancestry.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 8, 2026
To address this, the researchers used Bayesian spatio-phylogenetic analyses, which account for both shared ancestry and geographic influence.
From Science Daily • Apr. 5, 2026
Instead of processing it on CODIS, they used another part of the DNA to search for potential relatives of the unknown killer in ancestry databases.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 24, 2026
The conservation project became possible after scientists discovered tortoises carrying Floreana ancestry on Wolf Volcano on Isabela island in 2008.
From BBC • Feb. 21, 2026
In the late 1970s several scientists realized that an ethnic group’s mitochondrial DNA could provide clues to its ancestry.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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.
