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ancestor

(ăn'sĕs'tər) pronunciation

A person from whom one is descended, especially if more remote than a grandparent; a forebear.
A forerunner or predecessor.
Law. The person from whom an estate has been inherited.
Biology. The actual or hypothetical organism or stock from which later kinds evolved.

[Middle English auncestre, from Old French, from Latin antecessor, predecessor, from antecessus, past participle of antecēdere, to precede : ante-, ante- + cēdere, to go.]

SYNONYMS ancestor, forebear, forefather, progenitor. These nouns denote a person from whom one is descended: ancestors who were farmers; land once owned by his forebears; laws handed down from our forefathers; our progenitors' wisdom.
ANTONYM descendant

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Thesaurus: ancestor

noun

A person from whom one is descended: antecedent, ascendant, father, forebear, forefather, foremother, mother, parent, progenitor. Archaic predecessor. See kin, precede/follow.
One that precedes, as in time: antecedent, forerunner, precursor, predecessor, progenitor. See precede/follow.

Antonyms: ancestor

Definition: predecessor in family
Antonyms: descendant

Word Tutor: ancestor

IN BRIEF: A forefather; a person coming early in the family line.

Gil wondered if he had a famous ancestor.

Wikipedia: ancestor

An ancestor is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, and so on).

Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other, or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species who share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent. However, this concept of ancestry does not apply to some bacteria and other organisms capable of horizontal gene transfer.

Assuming that all ancestors are unrelated, an individual has 2ⁿ ancestors in the nth generation before him and about 2^g+1 total ancestors in the g generations before him. In practise, however, it's clear that the vast majority of ancestors of humans (and indeed any other species) are somehow related. Consider n = 40: the human species is surely more than 40 generations old, yet the number 2⁴⁰ dwarfs the number of humans that have ever lived.

Some cultures place great reverence on ancestors, both living and dead; contrastingly, people in more youth-oriented cultural contexts may display a lesser degree of veneration for elders. In other cultural contexts, some people seek providence from their deceased ancestors; this practice is sometimes known as ancestor worship or, more accurately, ancestor veneration.

		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Antonyms. © 1999-2008 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved. eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ancestor". Read more
		Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more

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