ancestor
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: human-sciences
law
linguistics
sciences
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.
Base: antecēdō
Affixes: -tor
Inflected forms:
form: ancestors
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: ancestour
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: auncestor
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: auncestour
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: ancestors
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: ancestoring
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: ancestored
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: ancestored
pos: verb
tags: past
form: ancestour
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: auncestor
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: auncestour
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: An earlier type; a progenitor.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.
pos: noun
gloss: One who had the same role or function in former times.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: 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.
gloss: A word or phrase which serves as the origin of a term in another language.
pos: noun
gloss: To be an ancestor of.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 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.
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
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.
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?
Synonyms: ancestor
antecedent
ascendant
ascendent
forerunner
progenitor
Antonyms: descendant
afterbear
Derived words: 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
Translations: