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- Dictionaryancestor/ˈansɛstə/
noun
- 1. a person, typically one more remote than a grandparent, from whom one is descended: "he could trace his ancestors back to James the First" Similar Opposite
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The meaning of ANCESTOR is one from whom a person is descended and who is usually more remote in the line of descent than a grandparent. How to use ancestor in a sentence.
ANCESTOR definition: 1. a person related to you who lived a long time ago: 2. a plant, animal, or object that is…. Learn more.
Your ancestors are the people from whom you are descended. ...our daily lives, so different from those of our ancestors. He could trace his ancestors back seven hundred years.
1. a person from whom one is descended; forebear; progenitor. 2. a. the form or stock from which an organism has descended. b. the actual or assumed earlier type from which a species or other taxon evolved. 3. an object, idea, style, or occurrence serving as a prototype, forerunner, or inspiration to a later one.
There are seven meanings listed in OED's entry for the noun ancestor. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.
So, an ancestor is someone who has gone before us. Evolutionary biologists have advanced the theory that all life on earth descends from a common ancestor. Ancestor can also mean "prototype" or "forerunner." The abacus is a distant ancestor of today's supercomputers.
a person in your family who lived a long time ago synonym forebear. His ancestors had come to America from Ireland. He claims as his literary ancestors such giants as Henry James and William Faulkner. Our earliest ancestors lived in a world fraught with danger. The Romans built these monuments to glorify their illustrious ancestors.
ANCESTOR meaning: 1 : a person who was in someone's family in past times one of the people from whom a person is descended; 2 : an animal in the past from which a modern animal developed
ANCESTOR meaning: a person in your family who lived a long time ago: . Learn more.
An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder, or a forebear, [1] is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth).