What does ancestor mean?
Definitions for ancestor
ˈæn sɛs tər; esp. Brit. -sə stəran·ces·tor
This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word ancestor.
Princeton's WordNet
ancestor, ascendant, ascendent, antecedent, rootnoun
someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)
Wiktionary
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.
ancestornoun
One who had the same role or function in former times.
ancestornoun
An earlier type; a progenitor
This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.
ancestornoun
One from whom an estate has descended;the correlative of heir.
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 Dictionary
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.
Wikipedia
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.
ChatGPT
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 Dictionary
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
Ancestornoun
an earlier type; a progenitor; as, this fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse
Ancestornoun
one from whom an estate has descended; -- the correlative of heir
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.]
Wikidata
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 Dictionary
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
Nouns Frequency
Rank popularity for the word 'ancestor' in Nouns Frequency: #2613
Usage in printed sourcesFrom:
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Anagrams for ancestor »
enactors
entosarc
Numerology
Chaldean Numerology
The numerical value of ancestor in Chaldean Numerology is: 3
Pythagorean Numerology
The numerical value of ancestor in Pythagorean Numerology is: 5
Examples of ancestor in a Sentence
A bunch of species all descended from the single ancestor have proliferated so there are many species now. And they’re all doing different things, for the most part, they are exploiting the environment in different ways. There are big beaks and small beaks. There are sharp beaks and dull ones.
What our age shows is that this can not be true, because they are virtually the same age, there must be an older common ancestor. It also gives much more time for the South African species to evolve, and reopens discussion about the role of the South African species into later hominins such as Paranthropus.
I want him to understand what history is, and what history means. Although he doesn't have anything to do with this story, it's our ancestor who has impacted the lives of a whole family who had a life in this country, i want him to learn and understand that whatever decisions he makes has an impact on someone else's life.
But what this animal tells us [is] that actually the last common ancestor of the two groups had lots of bone, so rather than sharks being primitive, sharks are actually very highly evolved in their own way, and just as highly evolved as we are.
It’s a green and red flag, it was designed by my ancestor, Leonard Helms, who helped George Rogers Clark conquer the old western frontier. They didn’t have any white or blue material, so he designed it using green and red.
Popularity rank by frequency of use
References
Translations for ancestor
From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary
- سلفArabic
- про́дакBelarusian
- прародител, предшественик, праотецBulgarian
- avantpassatCatalan, Valencian
- předekCzech
- Urahne, Ahn, Urahn, Stammmutter, Ahne, Vorfahrin, Ahnin, Vorfahr, StammvaterGerman
- tɔgbuiEwe
- πρόγονος, προπάτοραςGreek
- prauloEsperanto
- antepasado, ancestroSpanish
- esivanemEstonian
- esi-isä, esivanhemmatFinnish
- ancêtreFrench
- sinsearach, sinsearIrish
- sinnsearScottish Gaelic
- ős, előd, felmenőHungarian
- նախնի, նախահայրArmenian
- leluhurIndonesian
- ancestroIdo
- avo, antenato, abiatico, ascendenteItalian
- 先祖, 祖先Japanese
- 祖先, 조상Korean
- با وباپیرKurdish
- progenitrix, progenitorLatin
- sence, sencisLatvian
- предокMacedonian
- nenek moyang, leluhurMalay
- voorloper, voorouderDutch
- przodekPolish
- ancestralPortuguese
- strămoșRomanian
- пращур, прародитель, праотец, предшественник, предокRussian
- praotac, predak, предак, претка, прародитељ, pretka, predkinja, праотац, praroditelj, предкиња, pramajka, прамајкаSerbo-Croatian
- මුතුන් මිත්තෝSinhala, Sinhalese
- predokSlovak
- prédnik, prédnicaSlovene
- förfaderSwedish
- ataTurkish
- предокUkrainian
- tổ tiên, 祖先Vietnamese
- hibüröletan, büröletan, jibüröletanVolapük
- 祖先Chinese
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