Word.ws English Dictionary

ur-ancestor

ur-ancestor noun: an original ancestor; proto-ancestor.

Noun (1)

ur-ancestor (plural ur-ancestors)

  1. An original ancestor; proto-ancestor.
    • Often the ancestors were asked to intercede with the being who wielded the greatest power of all over the Shang people, the ur-ancestor known as the “Lord on High” (shangdi).2003, Confucius, translated by Edward Slingerland, Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries, translation of original in Old Chinese
    • In both, the first awareness of other creatures by the ur-ancestor (and therefore the first true self-consciousness) arrives through a feeling of a crowd on the skin.2006, Lesley Brill, Crowds, Power, and Transformation in Cinema

Noun (2) capitalized: Ur-ancestor

Ur-ancestor (plural Ur-ancestors)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of ur-ancestor.

Forms of ur-ancestor

pluralur-ancestors
alternative formUr-ancestor
pluralUr-ancestors

Origin of ur-ancestor

From ur- + ancestor.

Questions about ur-ancestor

What does ur-ancestor mean?
Ur-ancestor means an original ancestor; proto-ancestor.
What part of speech is ur-ancestor?
Ur-ancestor is a noun.
What is the plural of ur-ancestor?
The plural of ur-ancestor is ur-ancestors.

Words near ur-ancestor in the dictionary

  1. Ur continent
  2. Ur continents
  3. ur mom
  4. ur mum
  5. ur-
  6. ur-ancestor
  7. ur-ancestors
  8. ur-continent
  9. ur-continents
  10. ur-cool
  11. ur-culture

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ur-ancestor (page history and authors); Ur-ancestor (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ur-ancestor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ur-ancestor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.