Other forms: ancestors
An ancestor is a family member from long before you. Our ancestors, a distant ancestor, ancestor worship.
It means somebody you descend from, so a great-great-grandparent is one and a great-uncle is not. Go back far enough and everybody alive shares ancestors, which is a mathematical certainty rather than a sentiment. Ancestor worship is central to several religions. The word also covers earlier versions of a thing: the ancestor of the modern bicycle. Note ancestry, ancestral; and descendant, which is the opposite direction.
1nounancestorA family member from long before you.
“Her ancestors were fishermen who lived on this island for centuries.”
2nounearlierAn earlier version of something.
“The abacus is sometimes called the ancestor of the modern calculator.”
ancestor is a forebear.
Latin antecessor means one who goes before — ante plus cedere, to go. Predecessor, concede and access come from the same going.
Middle English
auncestre
English, today
ancestor
Built from
From Middle English auncestre. From Middle English ancestre, auncestre, ancessour; the first forms from Old French ancestre (modern French ancêtre), from the Latin - nominative antecessor (“one who goes before”); the last form from Old French ancessor, from Latin antecessōrem, accusative of antecessor, from antecēdō + -tor, from ante + cēdō. See cede, and compare with a doublet of antecessor.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA