# ancestor
## English
### Alternative forms

* ancestour (obsolete)
* auncestor (obsolete)
* auncestour (obsolete)

### Etymology

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.

### Pronunciation

* (General American) IPA: /ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/
* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈæn.sɛs.tə/
* Hyphenation: an‧ces‧tor
* Audio (US):(file)

### Noun

ancestor (plural ancestors)
* 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.
** 2013 July 20, “Old soldiers?”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845: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.
* An earlier type; a progenitor
    This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.
* (law) One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.
* (figuratively) One who had the same role or function in former times.
** 2011 October 1, Saj Chowdhury, “Wolverhampton 1-2 Newcastle”, in BBC Sport: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.
* (linguistics) A word or phrase which serves as the origin of a term in another language.

#### Usage notes

* There is a rare feminine form ancestress

#### Synonyms

* (person from whom one is descended): forebear, fore-elder, forefather
* (previous fulfiller of a role or duty): predecessor
* (originating word): reflex, source, origin

#### Antonyms

* descendant
* afterbear

#### Derived terms

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

#### Translations
### Verb

ancestor (third-person singular simple present ancestors, present participle ancestoring, simple past and past participle ancestored)
* (transitive) To be an ancestor of.
** 1920, Marie Conway Oemler, The Purple Heights, page 9: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.
** 1942, William Faulkner, “The Bear”, in Go down, Moses: and other stories, page 281:But he could have completed it: Lucas Quintus Carothers McCaslin Beauchamp. Last surviving sone and child of Tomey's Terrel and Tennie Beauchamp. March 17, 1874 except that there was no need: not Lucius Quintus &c &c &c, but Lucas Quintus, not refusing to be called Lucius, because he simply eliminated that word from the name; not denying, declining the name itself, because he used three quarters of it; but simply taking the name and changing, altering it, making it no longer the white man's but his own , by himself composed, himself selfprogenitive and nominate, by himself ancestored, as, for all the old ledgers recorded to the contrary, old Carothers himself was
** 2006, Richard T. Hull, Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 1951-1960: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.
** 2010, Peter Loptson, Reality: Fundamental Topics in Metaphysics, →ISBN, page 171:How, that is, could ancestoring Elizabeth become a relational property of James's, when there was, when Elizabeth began to exist, no James to have this property?

### Anagrams

* sortance, Screaton, Canteros, Careston, enactors, carstone, Castrone, Conatser, Rostance, sarconet, entosarc