Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ancestor in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Ancestor means 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. Example: “This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.”

Examples of ancestor by meaning

nounOne from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a...

  • Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine.2013 July 20, “Old soldiers?”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845, archived from the original on 08 Mar 2023

nounAn earlier type; a progenitor.

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

nounOne who had the same role or function in former times.

  • The Magpies are unbeaten and enjoying their best run since 1994, although few would have thought the class of 2011 would come close to emulating their ancestors.2011 October 1, Saj Chowdhury, “Wolverhampton 1-2 Newcastle”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 17 Jul 2024

verbTo be an ancestor of.

  • Her own grandfather had been a Virginian, a descendant of Pocahontas, of course, Pocahontas having been created by Divine Providence for the specific purpose of ancestoring Virginians.1920, Marie Conway Oemler, The Purple Heights, page 9
  • The human population of this earth is descended from a most adaptable population, that which originated living matter and then proceeded through continuous specific change to become the population that ancestored man.2006, Richard T. Hull, Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 1951-1960
  • How, that is, could ancestoring Elizabeth become a relational property of James's, when there was, when Elizabeth began to exist, no James to have this property?2010, Peter Loptson, Reality: Fundamental Topics in Metaphysics, →ISBN, page 171

More sentences with ancestor

  • Tigers and lions share a common ancestor from a few million years ago.From the entry lion
  • The wild red oat is thought to be the ancestor of modern food oats.From the entry oat
  • A hundred thousand years from now, will Homo sapiens have evolved into beings unrecognizable to their ancestors?From the entry evolve
  • Respect towards ancestors is an essential part of Thai spiritual practice.From the entry spiritual
  • The Indo-European languages share various similarities as a result of their inheritance from a common ancestor.From the entry inheritance
  • The monarchs of Spain and the UK have a common ancestor namely Queen Victoria.From the entry common ancestor
  • The theory of evolution states that all life on Earth has a common ancestor.From the entry common ancestor
  • Lady Merlumina?! You were well met. She is an ancestor of mine.From the entry well met
  • The Shinto priest burnt incense for his ancestors.From the entry priest
  • Humans share common ancestors with other apes.From the entry human
  • The evolutionary history of marine mammals includes land-dwelling ancestors.From the entry evolutionary
  • The algal ancestors of land plants were probably haplobiontic.From the entry haplobiontic
  • A set of words can be formal cognates only if they can be derived from a common ancestor by regular sound laws.From the entry formal
  • "Is an ancestor of" is a transitive relation: if Alice is an ancestor of Bob, and Bob is an ancestor of Carol, then Alice is an ancestor of Carol.From the entry transitive
  • No, the original plan for Chicago's street layout was not scribbled on the back of a napkin by an ancestor of Roger Ebert; you just ate the onion.From the entry eat the onion
  • Traditions relate how Tayal ancestors migrated north from Ren-ai Township, Nantou County.2023, Ai-Ching Yen, Yin-An Chen, “Collective Action for Sustainable Development: A case study of a Tayal Indigenous community in Taiwan”…. From the entry Ren-ai
  • It can help you connect with your family and learn about your ancestors.2021-2022 Winter, Albert Keiser, “Foundation Request”, in SAR Magazine, volume 116, number 3, Louisville, KY: Sons of the American…. From the entry black sheep
  • Our ancestors were creative in the ways they commemorated historical climactic events.2020, Valerie Trouet, “Winter is Coming”, in Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins…. From the entry hunger stone
  • Bit by bit, she learned the stories of her ancestors and of Cape Cod.2020, Josephine de la Bruyere, “The Duality of Being a Mayflower Descendant”, in The Provincetown Independent. From the entry the boat
  • Ancestral vampyropods diverged from the ancestors of squid way back in the Triassic.2017, Danna Staaf, Squid Empire, ForeEdge, →ISBN, page 119. From the entry vampyropod
  • These sites contain living spirits, or Shxweli, and stand as cautionary tales from their ancestors.2017 April 22, Francesca Bianco and Holly McKenzie Sutter, “Set in Stone: Stó:lō ancestors' spirits live in Fraser Valley landmarks”, in…. From the entry Stó:lō
  • With their immediate ancestors, dinosaurs were the only terrestrial nonplantigrades during the Mesozoic.2016 January 21, “Nonplantigrade Foot Posture: A Constraint on Dinosaur Body Size”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry nonplantigrades
  • Around 50 million years ago, cetacean ancestors took to the water.2016 November 30, Elsa Panciroli, “How did the whale get its 'moustache'?”, in The Guardian. From the entry hoofy
  • Some four or five generations ago, Buddhidhan's ancestors had been the chief administrators, the karbharis of Suvarnapur.2015, Tridip Suhrud, translating Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi, Sarasvatichandra I, Orient BlackSwan 2015, p. 22. From the entry karbhari
  • My ancestors came from the region of Zhangzhou in Fujian, China.2014, Lu Hsiu-lien, Ashley Esarey, My Fight for a New Taiwan, University of Washington Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 20. From the entry Zhangzhou
  • The Cyprus cat is similar to the domestic cat's ancestor, the African wildcat, Felis silvestris lybica.2014, The Cat Encyclopedia: The Definitive Visual Guide, Dorling Kindersley, →ISBN, page 15. From the entry Cyprus Cat
  • Wade argues that our pre-gracilized ancestors lived in a world closer to Hobbes than Rousseau.2011, JH Hinshaw, “Darwinian Evolution and Social History”, in Journal of Social History, volume 45, number 1. From the entry gracilized
  • Maybe their ancestors were some nonspecific crocodiley thing, back in the Triassic”.2011, Henry Gee, “Feathers of the Dinosaur”, in Ian Whates, editor, Fables from the Fountain, England: NewCon Press, →ISBN, pages 156–157. From the entry crocodiley
  • The other obvious option would be to look toward the monotiopleurids for an ancestor.2011, N. Ikeya, K. Ishizaki, T. Hanai, Evolutionary Biology of Ostracoda, page 1060. From the entry monotiopleurid
  • The lines on the spearthrower interpret the Journey of the Great Snake Liru, a Dreamtime ancestor.2010, Dale Kerwin, Aboriginal Dreaming Paths and Trading Routes: The Colonisation of the Australian Economic Landscape, page 10. From the entry spearthrower
  • The orbicularian common ancestor had perhaps seven different types of silk gland.2010, Leslie Brunetta, Catherine L. Craig, Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging. From the entry orbicularian
  • Wilson thinks today's eusocial species likely had ancestors similar to a Japanese stem-nesting xylocopine bee, Ceratina flavipes.2009 February 6, Elizabeth Pennisi, “EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY: Agreeing to Disagree”, in Science, volume 323, number 5915, →DOI, pages 706–708. From the entry xylocopine
  • This initial orlay is its heritage, compiled from the words and deeds of those ancestors.2009, Alaric Albertsson, Travels Through Middle Earth. From the entry orlay

Meaning of ancestor

  1. noun 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. noun An earlier type; a progenitor.
  3. noun One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.

Full definition of ancestor

Questions about ancestor in a sentence

How do you use ancestor in a sentence?
Ancestor is used as a noun and verb. For example: “This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.”
What is a short sentence with ancestor?
“Humans share common ancestors with other apes.”
What does ancestor mean?
Ancestor means 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.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ancestor (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use ancestor in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ancestor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.