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ancestor

noun
/ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/US/ˈæn.sɛs.tə/UK

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ent- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₂énts Proto-Indo-European *-i Proto-Indo-European *h₂énti Proto-Italic *anti Latin ante Latin ante- Proto-Italic *kezdō Latin cedo Proto-Indo-European *-tōr Proto-Italic *-tōr Latin -tor Latin antecessor Anglo-Norman auncestrebor. Middle English auncestre English ancestor From Middle English ancestre, auncestre, ancessour; the first forms from Old French ancestre (modern French ancêtre), from the Latin nominative antecessor (“one who goes before”); the last form from Old French ancessor, from Latin antecessōrem, accusative of antecessor, from antecēdō (“to go before”) + -tor (“-er”), from ante- (“before”) + cēdō (“to go”). See cede, and compare with antecessor.

  1. derived from ancessor
  2. derived from ancestre
  3. derived from ancestre

Definitions

  1. One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any…

    One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather; a forebear.

    • Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine. The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless.

  2. An earlier type

    An earlier type; a progenitor.

    • This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.
    • Some of the descendants of this cyclopean ancestor left their burrows and started to swim.

  3. One from whom an estate has descended

    One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.

  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. One who had the same role or function in former times.

      • The Magpies are unbeaten and enjoying their best run since 1994, although few would have thought the class of 2011 would come close to emulating their ancestors.

    2. A word or phrase which serves as the origin of a term in another language.

    3. To be an ancestor of.

      • Her own grandfather had been a Virginian, a descendant of Pocahontas, of course, Pocahontas having been created by Divine Providence for the specific purpose of ancestoring Virginians.
      • The human population of this earth is descended from a most adaptable population, that which originated living matter and then proceeded through continuous specific change to become the population that ancestored man.

The neighborhood

Derived

ancestorhood, ancestorial, ancestorism, ancestorship, ancestor spirit, ancestor worship, ancestrula, ancestry, apical ancestor, cenancestor, common ancestor, grandancestor, grandcestor, last universal ancestor, last universal common ancestor, proto-ancestor, protoancestor, trancestor, ur-ancestor

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at ancestor. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01ancestor02progenitor03whom04whomever05persons06patronymic07ancestors

A definitional loop anchored at ancestor. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at ancestor

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA