Definitions for ancestor
ˈæn sɛs tər; esp. Brit. -sə stəran·ces·tor

Princeton's WordNetRate this definition:3.3 / 4 votes

1. ancestor, ascendant, ascendent, antecedent, rootnoun

   someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)

WiktionaryRate this definition:3.0 / 2 votes

1. ancestornoun

   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.

2. ancestornoun

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

3. ancestornoun

   An earlier type; a progenitor

   This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.

4. ancestornoun

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

5. Etymology: ancestre, auncestre, ancessour; the first forms from ancestre (modern French ancêtre), from the nominative antecessor one who goes before; the last form from ancessor, from Latin accusative antecessorem, from antecedo; ante + cedo. See cede, and compare with antecessor.

Samuel Johnson's DictionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. ANCESTORnoun

   One from whom a person descends, either by the father or the mother. It is distinguished from predecessor; which is not, like ancestor, a natural, but civil denomination. An hereditary monarch succeeds to his ancestors; an elective, to his predecessors.

   Etymology: ancestor, Lat. ancestre, Fr.

   And she lies buried with her ancestors,
   O, in a tomb where never scandal slept,
   Save this of hers. William Shakespeare, Much ado about Nothing.

   Cham was the paternal ancestor of Ninus, the father of Chus, the grandfather of Nimrod; whose son was Belus, the father of Ninus. Walter Raleigh, History of the World.

   Obscure! why pr’ythee what am I? I know
   My father, grandsire, and great grandsire too:
   If farther I derive my pedigree,
   I can but guess beyond the fourth degree.
   The rest of my forgotten ancestors,
   Were sons of earth like him, or sons of whores. John Dryden, Persius, sat. vi.

WikipediaRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Ancestor

   An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder, or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law, the person from whom an estate has been inherited."Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent. However, this concept of ancestry does not apply to some bacteria and other organisms capable of horizontal gene transfer. Some research suggests that the average person has twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. This might have been due to the past prevalence of polygynous relations and female hypergamy.Assuming that all of an individual's ancestors are otherwise unrelated to each other, that individual has 2n ancestors in the nth generation before her/him and a total of 2g+1 − 2 ancestors in the g generations before him/her. In practice, however, it is clear that most ancestors of humans (and any other species) are multiply related (see pedigree collapse). Consider n = 40: the human species is more than 40 generations old, yet the number 240, approximately 1012 or one trillion, dwarfs the number of humans who have ever lived. Some cultures confer reverence to ancestors, both living and dead; in contrast, some more youth-oriented cultural contexts display less veneration of elders. In other cultural contexts, some people seek providence from their deceased ancestors; this practice is sometimes known as ancestor worship or, more accurately, ancestor veneration.

ChatGPTRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. ancestor

   An ancestor is a person from whom one is descended, typically someone more remote than a grandparent. It can also refer to an animal, plant, or object from the past from which others have evolved or developed.

Webster DictionaryRate this definition:5.0 / 1 vote

1. Ancestornoun

   one from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a fore father

2. Ancestornoun

   an earlier type; a progenitor; as, this fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse

3. Ancestornoun

   one from whom an estate has descended; -- the correlative of heir

4. Etymology: [OE. ancestre, auncestre, also ancessour; the first forms fr. OF. ancestre, F. anctre, fr. the L. nom. antessor one who goes before; the last form fr. OF. ancessor, fr. L. acc. antecessorem, fr. antecedere to go before; ante before + cedere to go. See Cede, and cf. Antecessor.]

WikidataRate this definition:5.0 / 1 vote

1. Ancestor

   An ancestor or forebear is a parent or the parent of an ancestor. Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited." Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other, or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent. However, this concept of ancestry does not apply to some bacteria and other organisms capable of horizontal gene transfer. Assuming that all of an individual's ancestors are otherwise unrelated to each other, that individual has 2 ancestors in the nth generation before him and a total of about 2+1 ancestors in the g generations before him. In practice, however, it is clear that the vast majority of ancestors of humans are multiply related. Consider n = 40: the human species is more than 40 generations old, yet the number 240, approximately 10¹² or one trillion, dwarfs the number of humans that have ever lived. Ignoring the possibility of other inter-relationships among ancestors, an individual has a total of 2046 ancestors up to the 10th generation, 1024 of which are 10th generation ancestors. With the same assumption, any given person has over a billion 30th generation ancestors and this theoretical number increases past the estimated total population of the world in around AD 1000.

Chambers 20th Century DictionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. Ancestor

   an′ses-tur, n. one from whom a person has descended: a forefather:—fem. An′cestress.—adj. Ances′tral.—ns. An′cestor-wor′ship, the chief element in the religion of China and other countries—erroneously supposed by Herbert Spencer to be the foundation of all religion; An′cestry, a line of ancestors: lineage. [O. Fr. ancestre—L. antecessor—ante, before, cedĕre, cessum, to go.]

British National Corpus

1. Nouns Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word 'ancestor' in Nouns Frequency: #2613

Anagrams for ancestor »

1. enactors

2. entosarc

How to pronounce ancestor?

1. Alex

   US English

   David

   US English

   Mark

   US English

   Daniel

   British

   Libby

   British

   Mia

   British

   Karen

   Australian

   Hayley

   Australian

   Natasha

   Australian

   Veena

   Indian

   Priya

   Indian

   Neerja

   Indian

   Zira

   US English

   Oliver

   British

   Wendy

   British

   Fred

   US English

   Tessa

   South African

How to say ancestor in sign language?

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of ancestor in Chaldean Numerology is: 3

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of ancestor in Pythagorean Numerology is: 5

Examples of ancestor in a Sentence

1. Eugenia Gold:

   But nothing shows us what pterosaurs looked like before they adapted to fly, all the evidence shows us the pterosaurs are cousins of dinosaurs and that both share a common ancestor.

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson:

   The ancestor of every action is a thought.

3. Laurence J. Peter:

   Every man serves a useful purpose A miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.

4. Conrad Labandeira:

   That, in turn, suggests that the two groups of insects share a genetic program for eyespot production, the last common ancestor of these insects lived about 320 million years ago, deep in the Paleozoic. So we think this must be a developmental mechanism that goes all the way back to the origins of winged insects.

5. Timothy Gibson:

   There is strong fossil evidence that red algae existed over a billion years ago, and we know the red and green algae diverged from a common ancestor, so, although this doesnt fundamentally change the way Ill think about theevolutionof life, the discovery of this green algal fossil helps fill an important gap and strengthens an emerging timeline for the evolution of early, complex life.

Popularity rank by frequency of use

References

1. ^ Princeton's WordNet
   http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=ancestor
2. ^ Wiktionary
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ancestor
3. ^ Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
   https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=ancestor
4. ^ Wikipedia
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestor
5. ^ ChatGPT
   https://chat.openai.com
6. ^ Webster Dictionary
   https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ancestor
7. ^ Wikidata
   https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?search=ancestor
8. ^ Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
   https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37683/37683-h/37683-h.htm#:~:text=ancestor