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 ( see antecede) + -tor -tor; cf. 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
His very grave is disputed—a dispossessed antecessor claims the ground as his own, and the dead body of the Conqueror has to wait while its last resting-place is bought with money.
From William the Conqueror by Freeman, Edward Augustus
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.
