ancestral

American  

[an-ses-truhl] / ænˈsɛs trəl /

adjective

1. pertaining to ancestors; descending or claimed from ancestors.

   an ancestral home.

2. serving as a forerunner, prototype, or inspiration.

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ancestral British  

/ ænˈsɛstrəl /

adjective

1. of, inherited from, or derived from ancestors

   his ancestral home

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noun

1. logic a relation that holds between x and y if there is a chain of instances of a given relation leading from x to y. Thus the ancestral of parent of is ancestor of, since x is the ancestor of y if and only if x is a parent of…a parent of…a parent of y

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

Example Sentences

Their loved one's ashes are placed inside and the space turned into an ancestral shrine.

From BBC

The granddaughter of a traumatized mouse may still carry a certain characteristic, but her fundamental mousiness isn’t a result of such highly specific ancestral experiences, which operate in the narrowest crevices of evolution.

From The Wall Street Journal

Indigenous tribes whose ancestral home includes Nevada’s high desert have derided “City,” which now includes a land acknowledgment on its website.

From The Wall Street Journal

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

She questions minor inconsistencies in divorce paperwork from Erika Kirk’s first marriage and ancestral records to dispute Kirk’s narrative that she was primarily raised by a “strong, independent single mother.”

From Salon

Related Words

• familial
• tribal