antecessor
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of antecessor
1375–1425; late Middle English antecessour (< Middle French ) < Latin antecessor he who goes before, a predecessor, equivalent to anteced-, variant stem of antecēdere ( antecede ) + -tor -tor; ancestor
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.
These include remains assigned to Homo erectus as well as Homo antecessor, a distinct species, with both dated to around one million years ago.
From Science Daily • Dec. 16, 2025
Patterns of bone-breakage in Homo antecessor, considered the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, suggest that cannibalism goes back a half-million years or more.
From New York Times • Jul. 1, 2023
Homo antecessor is believed to have been the last common ancestor of modern humans and their extinct Neanderthal cousins, who diverged about 800,000 years ago.
From Seattle Times • Jun. 2, 2023
“There is an archaic human population with facial morphology that resembles modern humans in many ways, and it is a lot older than Jebel Irhoud,” he says of H. antecessor.
From Scientific American • Jun. 8, 2017
I: "Paracletus solus antecessor, quia solus post Christum;" 2: "Eas ego ecclesias proposui, quas et ipsi apostolici viri condiderunt, et puto ante quosdam;" 3: "Sed nec inter consuetudines dispicere voluerunt illi sanctissimi antecessores."
From History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) by Buchanan, Neil
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.
