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ancestor

Pronunciation: /ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/

The English word “ancestor” has 6 meanings listed here.

noun

  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.
  2. An earlier type; a progenitor.
  3. One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.
  4. One who had the same role or function in former times.
  5. A word or phrase which serves as the origin of a term in another language.

verb

  1. To be an ancestor of.

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.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.