adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
- ancestrally adverb
- nonancestral adjective
- nonancestrally adverb
- pseudoancestral adjective
- pseudoancestrally adverb
Etymology
Origin of ancestral
1425–75; late Middle English aunce ( s ) trel < Middle French, equivalent to ancestre ancestor + -el -al 1
Explanation
Ancestral things have been around so long that they once belonged to your ancestors, the family members who lived before your grandparents were born. Your ancestral home is the place your great-grandparents or great-great-uncle once lived. You can also use this adjective to describe things that someone inherited from ancestors, like your friend's ancestral beach cottage or your mom's ancestral set of silverware. Ancestral comes from the Late Latin antecessor, "predecessor," or literally "forgoer," from the root antecedere, "to precede."
Vocabulary lists containing ancestral
"Earthquake"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The tribe is now grappling with the sudden loss of jobs, along with the dimming of hope that the culturally sacred fish will be restored to their ancestral waters.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 4, 2026
Their loved one's ashes are placed inside and the space turned into an ancestral shrine.
From BBC • Mar. 31, 2026
By comparing how these gene clusters are arranged across hundreds of plant genomes and tracing their patterns from ancestral species to modern plants, they were able to detect conserved elements that earlier methods had missed.
From Science Daily • Mar. 14, 2026
Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of his father, was born in 1969, in the religious city of Mashhad, in the family’s ancestral home.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 9, 2026
Suspicion and fear: possessiveness and greed: resentment for ancestral wrong: all these seemed to be a part of it.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
