Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ancestral in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Ancestral means of, pertaining to, derived from, or possessed by, an ancestor or ancestors. Example: “This is my house and my family's ancestral home.”

Examples of ancestral by meaning

adjectiveOf, pertaining to, derived from, or possessed by, an ancestor or ancestors.

  • an ancestral estate
  • one’s ancestral home
  • It seems that people with an ancestral history of enduring famines develop a tendency to store more body fat, becoming overfat even when they aren’t overweight.2025 June 17, Shane Duquette, Marco Walker-Ng, “What is Skinny Fat? And How to Know If You Are”, in Bony to Beastly, archived from the...

nounAn ancestor or forbear.

  • Some big cheese bein' grought back to his native island to get planted with his ancestrals.1955, Harry Chandler Elliott, Reprieve from Paradise, page 147
  • I thought of the strange two-dimensional world these forebearing ancestrals had to live in.2006, Scott Dikkers, Peter Hilleren, Destined for Destiny, page 23
  • Moreover, the superior ancestrals associated with Plymouth Rock (the Pilgrim Fathers) and Mt.2007, Michael R. Ott, The Future of Religion: Toward a Reconciled Society, page 145

nounA descendant of one's ancestors.

  • But ancestrals cannot be willed away .1921, Jagannath Raghunath Gharpure, Principles of Hindu Law, page 390
  • Having no regards for their ancestrals and parents.1946, Sino-Indian Studies - Volume 2, Part 1, page 19

nounAn elderly relative.

  • Cadwy and some of the ancestrals carried Gilbert back to the platform to have his wounds healed by Guinevere.2018, R. C. Jette, The Elfdins and the Gold Temple: An Oralee Chronicle

nounA genetic precursor.

  • All the ancestrals with unknown origin or pedigree were included within this group.1993, Jorge Enrique Autrique, Molecular Markers Applied to Wheat Improvement, page 33
  • Some of the tequila ancestrals and añejos have a subdominant odor to them — the smoky, vanilla-like syringaldehyde that is also in coastal raicillas and bacanoras .2023, Gary Paul Nabhan, David Suro Piñera, Agave Spirits: The Past, Present, and Future of Mezcals

nounA forerunner; One who was involved in an earlier version of something.

  • It is hard, remember, to match the craft and proficiency of the ancestrals' bare-bones protocols of turning grapes into raisins, of mastering heat, dirt, and moisture to produce a natural and inexpensive candy.1996, Victor Davis Hanson, Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea, page 25
  • Ancestrals were planters and irrigators, but more cosmopolitan.2015, Allan Hayes, John Blom, Carol Hayes, Southwestern Pottery: Anasazi to Zuni
  • I did what any eighties East Coast nerdy writer would do: I called on the ancestrals and they guided me.2017, Jerry Thompson, Eddie Muller, Oakland Noir

nounAn earlier version of something.

  • The old ancestrals of the Murray were disrupted and caused to flow along the Gulpa Creek at the toe of the fault escarpment to Deniliquin (Pels 1966).1978, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria - Volume 90, page 75

nounThe spirit of one's ancestor.

  • Only three of the 23 societies with such kinship groups lack active ancestrals.1960, Guy E. Swanson, The Birth of the Gods: The Origin of Primitive Beliefs, page 103
  • The Guru then asked them that if their water could reach the sun or their ancestrals as they used to believe, why could his water not reach Kartarpur, which was far nearer than the sun.1999, Surinder Jit Singh Pall, The Masters & the Word Divine: Questions-answers, page 32

More sentences with ancestral

  • This is my house and my family's ancestral home.From the entry house
  • Experts disagree over whether temnospondyls were ancestral to modern amphibians (frogs, salamanders and caecilians), or whether the whole group died out without leaving descendants.From the entry temnospondyl
  • Lowe also took inspiration from ancestral Hoocąk and neighboring Woodland people’s expertise with craft and construction.2025 October 9, ““Water’s Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe” Opens Oct. 24 at the National Museum of the American Indian”, in Smithsonian…. From the entry Hoocąk
  • Nowadays, however, cheap printed fabrics are replacing our ancestral hand-woven textiles.2020 May 1, Bartlomiej Kaftan, “Queens’ Land: the indigenous Mayan queens of Guatemala – photo essay”, in The Guardian. From the entry put one's heart in
  • 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
  • The assumption that pure, unadmixed ancestral populations have ever existed, and exist now in contemporary populations.2015 June 27, Imp Kerr, “Sci-Fi Crime Drama With A Strong Black Lead”, in The New Inquiry. From the entry unadmixed
  • However, a few hymenopterans and hemipteroids do possess the ancestral insect mitogenome gene order.2015 July 31, “The Asian Rice Gall Midge ( Orseolia oryzae ) Mitogenome Has Evolved Novel Gene Boundaries and Tandem Repeats That…. From the entry hemipteroid
  • Apocarpous fruits are the ancestral state in Acronychia and subapocarpous and fully syncarpous fruits are derived.2015 August 25, “Phylogeny of Acronychia (Rutaceae) and First Insights into Its Historical Biogeography and the Evolution of Fruit…. From the entry subapocarpous
  • Fukushima prefecture, located just south of Miyagi, was also part of the ancestral lands of the Emishi.2013, Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being, Canongate Books (2019), page 151. From the entry Fukushima
  • This tree represents a complex “phylogeny” of macromolecules all within one ancestral lineage, before the proto-organism.2013, Geoffrey Eglinton, Mary Teresa Joseph Murphy, Organic Geochemistry: Methods and Results. From the entry protoorganism
  • The Dream Time long ago was a special 'everywhere' time where the ancestral heroes and gods lived.2012, The Abbotts, Dream Time Magic and Other Australian Legends. From the entry Dream Time
  • Fu Lang's ancestral home was Linwei (臨渭) in Lüeyang (略陽) commandery (northeast of modern Tianshui (天水), Gansu).2010, Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature, volume I, →ISBN, →ISSN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 238. From the entry Lüeyang
  • The value of gravestone inscriptions for ancestral research has long been recognised.2005, William J. Roulston, Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors: The Essential Genealogical Guide to Early Modern Ulster, 1600-1800, Ulster…. From the entry gravestone
  • Othala deals with ancestral property, both physical and nonphysical, as well as one’s heritage.1998, Silver RavenWolf, American Folk Magick: Charms, Spells & Herbals, St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, →ISBN, page 232. From the entry othala
  • Invoked, Othala brings ancestral power and supports values and traditions of the family.1998, Silver RavenWolf, American Folk Magick: Charms, Spells & Herbals, St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, →ISBN, page 232. From the entry othala
  • Ancestral ties such as existed between Crows and Hidatsas contributed to the sharing of costume ideas.1977, Ronald P[eter] Koch, “The People of the Plains”, in Dress Clothing of the Plains Indians (The Civilization of the American Indian…. From the entry inamicability
  • Chinchiang hsien alone contains the ancestral homes of at least 50 percent of the emigrants.1976, Robert J. Bolton, “The Minnan Chinese - An Overview A Vignette”, in Treasure Island: Church Growth Among Taiwan's Urban Minnan…. From the entry Chinchiang
  • Ordovician actinodontoids are probably ancestral to the heterodonts, unionaceans, and trigoniaceans.1971, Robert A[llen] Cadigan, “Moenkopi Formation and Related Strata”, in Robert A. Cadigan, J. H. Stewart, Petrology of the Triassic…. From the entry heterodont
  • To a mésalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in opposition.1907, Ambrose Bierce, Beyond the Walls. From the entry mésalliance
  • Do these then descend from a proto-epic, sung by people who spoke the language ancestral to Greek and Sanskrit?2025 December 12, Tom Hercules Davies, “Horses, Wheels, Languages: Greek, Mesopotamian and Indic Epic on the Eurasian Steppe”, in The…. From the entry proto-epic
  • The Kwagu’ł ancestral lands are “being completely cleared, faster than anything else globally,” said Hereditary Chief Makwala, Rande Cook (Ma’amtagila).2024 September 6, Odette Auger, “Sała - Mourning, Fighting, Healing”, in Watershed Sentinel. From the entry Kwagu'ł
  • Jeremy Pahl recommitted to learning his ancestral language after moving home to Kxeen, also known as Prince Rupert, B.C.2023 May 31, Kate Partridge, “Ts'msyen musician set to release album in Sm'algya̱x after years of studying endangered language”, in CBC…. From the entry Sm’algya̱x
  • Fones Cliff is the ancestral home of the tribe, located on the eastern side of the Rappahannock River in Virginia.2022 April 2, Zoe Sottile, “Native American tribe gets its land back after being displaced nearly 400 years ago”, in CNN. From the entry Rappahannock

Meaning of ancestral

  1. adjective Of, pertaining to, derived from, or possessed by, an ancestor or ancestors.
  2. noun An ancestor or forbear.
  3. noun A descendant of one's ancestors.

Full definition of ancestral

Questions about ancestral in a sentence

How do you use ancestral in a sentence?
Ancestral is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “This is my house and my family's ancestral home.”
What is a short sentence with ancestral?
“an ancestral estate”
What does ancestral mean?
Ancestral means of, pertaining to, derived from, or possessed by, an ancestor or ancestors.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ancestral (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 ancestral in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ancestral. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.