ancestoran‧ces‧tor /ˈænsəstə, -ses- $ -sestər/ ●●○ noun [countable] 
My ancestors were French.► see thesaurus at relative2an animal that lived in the past, that modern animals have developed from: Lions and house cats evolved from a common ancestor (=the same ancestor).3the form in which a modern machine, vehicle etc first existed SYN forerunnerancestor of Babbage’s invention was the ancestor of the modern computer.—ancestral /ænˈsestrəl/ adjective: the family’s ancestral home
WORD ORIGINancestor
Origin:
1300-1400 Old French ancestre, from Latin antecessor ‘one who goes before’, from antecedere; ➔ ANTECEDENTEXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- During the festival of Obon, Japanese show respect to their dead ancestors.
- Most of Luke's ancestors were Italian.
- My ancestors originally came form Ireland.
- About 7 million years ago the ancestors of mankind began to diverge from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees.
- Blood, he tells us, was associated by our ancestors with iron, because of the red that hides within the ore.
- His ancestor had been Gia Long, the emperor whose cause had been helped by Pigneau de Behaine.
- It's no surprise to learn that she numbers among her ancestors the Brothers Grimm.
- It is also found at all levels, not just among our nearest evolutionary ancestors, the monkeys and the apes.
- Ray was knocking them down one by one, unlike his tragic ancestor who only knocked himself down.
- There had been twelve of the chairs originally, made in 1750 for an ancestor of ours in Jamestown.
- This form developed bipedalism and other adaptations to the newly opening arid savannah landscape and eventually became the ancestor of man.
THESAURUS
a member of your family, especially one who does not live with you: · Most of her relatives were able to come to the wedding.· We have some distant relatives in Australia.
a member of your family. Relation means the same as relative. It is often used when talking about whether someone is in the same family as another person: · Big cities can be lonely places if you have no friends or relations there.· ‘What relation is she to you?’ ‘She’s my half sister.’· He’s no relation to the singer.
someone who is a family member of a person who lived and died a long time ago, for example the great-grandchild of that person: · The people are the descendants of slaves who were brought over from Africa.
a member of your family who lived a long time ago, especially hundreds of years ago: · My ancestors originally came from Ireland.
especially written people in your family who lived a long time ago – often used in historical descriptions: · His forefathers came to America over a century ago.
a family group that consists not only of parents and children, but also includes grandparents, aunts etc: · Extended families rarely live together in Britain, but they are still important.
especially American English informal your family, especially your parents: · Are you going to see your folks at Christmas?
the person or people who are most closely related to you, for example your husband or mother, and who need to be told if something serious happens to you: · The next of kin must be notified of his death before his name is released to the press.
Longman Language Activatorpeople who were in the same family as you a long time ago a member of your family who lived a long time ago, especially hundreds of years ago: · My ancestors originally came from Ireland.· During the festival of Obon, Japanese show respect to their dead ancestors.
people that you are related to who lived a long time ago: · Her family came to America from Scotland in about 1750.· Our family has lived around here for hundreds of years.
someone who is a relative of a person who lived and died a long time ago, especially a famous or important person: · Frederick and Bertha moved to Iowa in 1852, and their descendants still live in the area.descendant of: · Paul claims to be a descendant of King Charles I.
people in your family who lived a long time ago: · His forefathers helped settle this area a century and a half ago.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY Lions and house cats evolved from a common ancestor (=the same ancestor).COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
1a member of your family who lived a long time ago: Lions and house cats evolved from a common ancestor (=the same ancestor). (=someone related to you, who lived a long time ago)
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADJECTIVE· It is the direct ancestor of the organization Daley inherited.· Folk-song is the direct ancestor of lyric poetry, and the simplest artistic form that unites the Apolline and the Dionysiac.
· Although the crabs' distant ancestors came from the sea, these are land crabs.
· Likewise, our early ancestors most probably sifted out the useful plants by scent, sight and intuition.· After all, these were the most primitive people of all, our earliest ancestors.· They were slanted somehow, and he recollected pictures he had seen of the early ancestors of the Manchu.· The question has been frequently asked: Just how intelligent were our early modern ancestors?· Yet our early fire-raising ancestors hardly qualify as polluters.· And yet, one aspect of the lives of our earliest ancestors still astonishes us.· Marija Gimbutas Our earliest ancestors were nomads, travelers in small groups who followed the seasonal plants and the herds of reindeer.
· They had dropped out of the human chain of ancestors and descendants that had formerly bound them all together.· The human ancestors, in other words, were not even drop-outs, they were throw-outs.· He had no human ancestor and he was himself only half human.
· Its genes also hint at its remote ancestors.· Our remote ancestors took two hundred million years to learn how to adapt to the land.· Our remote ancestors were among those who found it expedient to change and diversify.
· Desmond Morris interprets the behaviour of domesticated horses, and reveals it as being much the same as their wild ancestors.· The wild ancestors of our domestic cats liked to eat freshly killed prey - they were not scavengers.· Those refined beasts were a small sample of the diversity of their wild ancestors.· All these breeds descend from some wild ancestor.· Wild at heart Another much-fostered fallacy is that farm animals are now quite different from their wild and free ancestors.
NOUN· After all, these islands have been steeped for centuries in everything from witchcraft to ancestor worship.· The sacred, the past, ancestor worship seem to be the chosen grounds in most cases.· Pre-Columbian ancestor worship finds expression in prayers to the saints.· There is no clearer case of ancestor worship in the Western world.
VERB· This form developed bipedalism and other adaptations to the newly opening arid savannah landscape and eventually became the ancestor of man.· Cain becomes an ancestor, and Abel does not.· All the known forms were fitted into a single sequence so that the Neanderthals became our own immediate ancestors.· A gene has only one criterion by which posterity judges it: whether it becomes an ancestor of other genes.
· Man appears to be descended from patrilineal ancestors.· All plants and animals are, with hindsight, the same because they all descend from an ancestor three billion years old.· All these breeds descend from some wild ancestor.
· The oldest are almost living ancestors.· We live, like our ancestors of the late fourth and early fifth centuries, in an age of anxiety and dread.· They live, like their ancestors, in packs of a dozen or so.
· As descent always involves modification, resemblance decreases as a shared ancestor recedes into the past.· Each is derived, no doubt, from some ancient shared ancestor.
· For the genealogist, however, the principal value of the returns lies in the help they provide in tracing elusive ancestors.
My ancestors were French.► see thesaurus at relative2an animal that lived in the past, that modern animals have developed from: Lions and house cats evolved from a common ancestor (=the same ancestor).3the form in which a modern machine, vehicle etc first existed SYN forerunnerancestor of Babbage’s invention was the ancestor of the modern computer.—ancestral /ænˈsestrəl/ adjective: the family’s ancestral home