Word Finder - ancestor

definition

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.

definition

An earlier type; a progenitor

example

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

definition

One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.

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

definition

A word or phrase which serves as the origin of a term in another language.

definition

To be an ancestor of.

It was their ancestor who wrote the letters I've got!

It's important for 'em to stay here—in the same place where ancestor Annie lived.

It was the natural yearning of that portion, any portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us.

Possibly there is a trace of ancestor worship even here; but the two usages have diverged.

Possibly he was an ancestor of the Median king.

The last Count of Promnitz, whose ancestor had purchased both baronies from Frederick of Bohemia in 1556, sold them in 1765 to the elector of Saxony for an annuity of 12,000 thalers (rSoo).

An extended family tree takes in all known descendants from a common ancestor.

Abbas, the vicegerent of Ali at Basra and ancestor of the future Abbasid dynasty, was in command.

The succeeding rangers of Exmoor forest kept up the pack until some 200 years ago, the hounds subsequently passing into the possession of Mr Walter of Stevenstone, an ancestor of the Rolle family.

His son Feodor, surnamed Koschka, was the ancestor of the families of Suchovo-Kobylin, Kalytschev and Scheremetjev, as well as of the Romanovs.

On the one hand, it seemed to follow from the existence of such a family that Homer was a mere " eponymus," or mythical ancestor; on the other hand, it became easy to imagine the Homeric poems handed down orally in a family whose hereditary occupation it was to recite them, possibly to add new episodes from time to time, or to combine their materials in new ways, as their poetical gifts permitted.

The domestic Indian buffalo (Bos bubalus) exists as a wild animal in North Australia; it is very liable to revert to a wild state, being little altered from its still-existing wild ancestor.

Another explanation is that the place of the sacred wolf once worshipped in Arcadia was taken in cult by Zeus Lycaeus, and in popular tradition by Lycaon, the ancestor of the Arcadians, who was supposed to have been punished for his insulting treatment of Zeus.

At the close of the 18th century the duke of Devonshire, lord of the manor (whose ancestor Sir Ralph de Gernons was lord of Bakewell in 1251), spent large sums of money on improvements in the town.

It is stated in the saga that the Swedish kings were believed to have control over the seasons like their ancestor, the god Frey, and traces of this belief seem to have lingered in the country down to the times of Gustavus Vasa.

At the parting of the ways which led, on the one hand, to modern Scyphomedusae, on the other to Anthozoa (III.), it is probable that the common ancestor was marked by incipient mesenteries and by the limitation of the sexual cells to endoderm.

Also, some of the prehistoric stocks in Thessaly, like the Achaean Aeacidae, may have regarded him as specially their ancestor.

The latter was tamed by the Incas, and is the ancestor of the guinea-pig.

The connexion with the Herefordshire family is not so impossible as the descent from Sitsyllt; but the earliest authentic ancestor of the lord treasurer is his grandfather, David, who, according to Burghley's enemies, "kept the best inn" in Stamford.

Like his emperor ancestor, Rudolph, he had to conquer the lands over Maxi- which his descendants were destined to rule, and by milian t arranging a treaty of succession to the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, he pointed the way to power and empire in eastern Europe.

On a conical hill above the pier stand the remains of Dunoon Castle, the hereditary keepership of which was conferred by Robert Bruce on the family of Sir Colin Campbell of Loch Awe, an ancestor of the duke of Argyll.

Not improbably they spoke a dialect (or dialects) akin to Arabic or Aramaic. 5 According to the Mahommedans, Ishmael, who is recognized as their ancestor, lies buried with his mother in the Kaaba in Mecca.

Jutland was acquired by Dan, the eponymous ancestor of the Danes.

The elder of the two surviving sons, James, earl of Dalkeith (1674-1705) had a son Francis (1695-1751), who through his grandmother, inherited the title of duke of Buccleuch in 1732, and was the ancestor of the later dukes.

The ivy-clad ruins of Bomby castle, founded in 1582 by Sir Thomas Maclellan, ancestor of the barons of Kirkcudbright, stand at the end of the chief street.

The dynasty is named after Sasan, an ancestor of Ardashir I.

On the departure of the Romans, the Goidelic hill-tribes, probably with help from Gower and Ireland, seem to have regained possession of the Usk valley under the leadership of a chieftain of their own race, Brychan, who became the ancestor of one of the three chief tribes of hereditary Welsh saints.

Tubal may be the eponymous ancestor of the people of that name mentioned in Ezekiel in connexion with "vessels of bronze."

As Hector Boece, " that pillar of falsehood," dubbed these presbyters " Culdees," " the pure Culdee," a blameless presbyterian, almost prehistoric, has been claimed as the ancestor of Scottish presbyterianism; and episcopacy has been regarded as a deplorable innovation.

Buffon, in a cautious, tentative fashion, suggested rather than stated the mutability of species and the influence of the forces of nature in moulding organisms. Immanuel Kant, in his Theory of the Heavens (1755), foreshadowed a theory of the development of unformed matter into the highest types of animals and plants, and suggested that the gradations of structure revealed by comparative anatomy pointed to the existence of blood relationship of all organisms, due to derivation from a common ancestor.

It is evident from his own lists that the Hawaiian kupuna means simply an ancestor.

Apart from the definite evidence, the theory of a racial distinction gains probability from the fact that it explains the survival of the distinction between the patricii, men with a family and genealogy, and the rest of the citizens, for some time after the latter had acquired the legal status of patres and were organized in gentes of their own; for on this theory privilege would belong not to all who could trace free descent but only to those who could trace descent to an ancestor of the conquering race.

He was the ancestor of the Molossian kings, who therefore claimed to be of pure Hellenic stock.

The Algerian Pleistocene camel was doubtless the direct ancestor of the living African species, which it serves to connect with the extinct C. sivalensis.

The type is very closely related to the oldest European (Etruscan) forms, and, in a less degree, to the " South Semitic " (old Minaean and Sabaean); and since it at once begins (c. 700) to develop along separate paths (Canaanite and Aramaean), it may be inferred that the common ancestor was not of long derivation.

An ancestor of the family appears to have held certain territories at Bamraoli near Agra c. 1195.

Through his sons he became the ancestor of the whole human race.

The red jungle fowl (Gallus ferrugineus), supposed to be the ancestor of our own poultry, is not good eating; and the same may be said of the peacock (Pavo cristatus), except when young.

After having won the battle of Panipat (1526) Baber was no more acknowledged as emperor of India than his ancestor Timur had been.

They withdrew to Thessaly, where Aegimius, the mythical ancestor of the Dorians, whom Heracles had assisted in war against the Lapithae, adopted Hyllus and made over to him a third part of his territory.

This conquest of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, commonly called the "Return of the Heraclidae," is represented as the recovery by the descendants of Heracles of the rightful inheritance of their hero ancestor and his sons.

The Dorians followed the custom of other Greek tribes in claiming as ancestor for their ruling families one of the legendary heroes, but the traditions must not on that account be regarded as entirely mythical.

His first ancestor in America may possibly have been Captain Isaac Maddyson, a colonist of 1623 mentioned by John Smith as an excellent Indian fighter.

Among the Arunta of Central Australia, the ghosts of the dead haunt certain localities, and, entering the bodies of passing women, are constantly reincarnated; the Black-snake clan of the Warramunga tribe embodies the spirits which the original ancestor had deposited by a certain creek.'

Another form of the Aramaic alphabet, namely, the so-called Estrangela writing which was in use amongst the Christians of northern Syria, was carried by Nestorian missionaries into Central Asia and became the ancestor of a multitude of alphabets spreading through the Turkomans as far east as Manchuria.

Ogilvy in a Catalogue of Australian Mammals, published at Sydney in 1892; the writer going however one step further and expressing the belief that the dingo is the ancestor of all domesticated dogs.

He was at last overthrown in a general rising headed by Telemachus, the ancestor of Theron (tyrant c. 4 88 -47 2), and burned in his brazen bull.

So it is the ancestor of all things; and Heaven and Earth are the father and mother of the world.

In 1801 the story went that this scion of the royal house of France had a son born to him in prison, who settled in Corsica under the name of "De Buona Parte," and became the ancestor of Napoleon!

The remote ancestor of Kiki luskut Kiki luq^%l-ma Ibri shd arammu I Itemi tittish " How shall I be dumb ?