Ancestor

How to spell ancestor

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ancestor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ancestor mean?

1. nounA person from whom one is descended, especially someone more distant than a grandparent.

Ancestor in a sentence

• Her earliest known ancestor arrived on a merchant ship in 1750.

• The museum traced each ancestor back through five centuries of parish records.

Where does ancestor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin antecessor, meaning 'one who goes before', built from ante 'before' and cedere 'to go' (the same root that gives us 'precede' and 'recede'). In Late Latin it came to describe a predecessor or forefather, someone who had gone before in the line of the family. English took it through Old French, where the spelling appeared in forms such as ancestre and ancessour, and it settled into Middle English during the 1200s. The modern shape kept the buried 'ces' from cedere, which is the spelling trap: the second 'c' is soft and easy to drop or swap. It is worth remembering that the same 'go' root sits inside 'concede', 'access', and 'ancestor' alike, all describing a kind of movement, whether forward, back, or down through the generations.

How the word is built

• ante- (before)
• cess (from cedere, to go)
• -or (agent noun: one who does)