ancestor

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English ancestre, also auncestre and ancessour,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French ancestre (modern ancêtre),^[5][6][7][8] together with auncestour and ancessour.^[5][3] The French ancestre continues the Latin nominative and ancessour the accusative of Late Latin antecessor (“predecessor, one who goes before”),^[3][4][9][2] an agent noun from Latin antecēdō (“to go before”),^[6][10][7] from ante- (“before”) and cēdō (“to go”),^[6][10][11] from Proto-Indo-European *ked- (“to go, yield”).^[6] The modern ending -or comes, according to Hoad, from ancestour, assimilated to words in -tor;^[2] Barnhart says the ending was Latinized in the 16th century,^[7] and Klein calls the word a blend of ancestre and ancessour.^[12] The OED notes that the medial s was at first only a French spelling, and later gave a spelling pronunciation.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A forebear, a person from whom one is descended: about 1300, in a Middle English life of Thomas Becket, where the word also means a predecessor in office.^[5][6] The Anglo-Norman ancessur is recorded from the 12th century.^[13]

Semantic evolution

Ayto points out that ancestor is ultimately the same word as antecedent,^[11] and Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories that ancestors are literally "those who went before", the same picture as in forebear.^[14] Chaucer wrote auncestres in the Wife of Bath's Tale.^[9] In law, from the early 16th century, it meant anyone who precedes another in an inheritance, the correlative of heir.^[5] Johnson (1755) distinguished it from predecessor: an ancestor is a natural relation, a predecessor a civil one.^[15] Later extensions were to the animal from which a breed descends (about 1760), to an earlier language (1822), and to a thing that is the forerunner or prototype of another (1860).^[5] The feminine ancestress is recorded from the 1570s.^[6] The verb, "to be the ancestor of", dates from 1776 in Merriam-Webster and 1883 in the OED.^[3][5]

Timeline

• c. 1300 – a forebear; also a predecessor.^[5]
• c. 1503 – law, one who precedes another in an inheritance.^[5]
• 1570s – ancestress.^[6]
• c. 1760 – an animal from which a breed descends.^[5]
• 1776 – verb, to be the ancestor of.^[3]
• 1822 – an earlier language from which later ones descend.^[5]
• 1860 – a thing that is the forerunner of another.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person from whom one is descended, usually further back than a grandparent; a forebear: Her ancestors farmed this valley.^[3][16][5]
2. An early animal or plant from which a later kind has evolved.^[16][5]
3. Something regarded as the forerunner or prototype of a later thing: the ancestor of the modern bicycle.^[16][5]
4. (law) A person from whom an estate has passed by inheritance.^[3][5]

Verb

1. To be the ancestor of.^[3][5]

Word family

• ancestry
• ancestor worship

Related words

• antecedent
• antecessor
• cede
• predecessor
• forebear

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
14. ^ Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins