ancestor

What it means

1. 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.

   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.

   2013 July 20, “Old soldiers?”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845, archived from the original on 08 Mar 2023

   Synonyms: forebear, fore-elder, forefather

2. An earlier type; a progenitor.

   This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.

   1 more example

   Some of the descendants of this cyclopean ancestor left their burrows and started to swim.

   2026 February 23, Carl Zimmer, “The Rise of Eyes Began With Just One. Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the evolution of the vertebrate eye. New research suggests that it traces back to a cyclopean invertebrate with a single eye atop the head”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 24 Feb 2026

3. lawOne from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.

In a sentence

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.

2013 July 20, “Old soldiers?”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845, archived from the original on 08 Mar 2023

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*h₂ent-
2. Proto-Indo-European*h₂énts
3. Proto-Indo-European*h₂énti
4. Proto-Italic*anti
5. Latinante
6. Latinante-
7. Latincedo
8. Latinantecessor
9. Anglo-Normanauncestre
10. Middle Englishauncestre
11. Englishancestor

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.