How to Use ancestor in a Sentence
ancestor
noun- Her ancestors were great sea captains.
- Latin is the ancestor of Italian and French.
- The museum included an exhibit showing ancestors of the modern computer.
- My ancestors came to America during the 1800s.
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Not like our ancestors who died of scurvy at the age of 30.
—Ali Wentworth, Glamour, 9 Aug. 2023
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The spirit of the ancestors has to make a statement in our lives.
—Lawrence Specker | Lspecker@al.com, al, 9 July 2023
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My ancestors have all died and the baton is in my hand.
—Kyle Eustice, SPIN, 24 Jan. 2025
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For Reti, value is in the spot in the river where his ancestors gave birth and the sacred ground where they’re buried.
—Rachel Pannett, Washington Post, 27 Oct. 2023
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The heroine feels a sense of belonging; she is told that this is the home of her ancestors.
—Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 6 Jan. 2025
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Epochs have passed since our last common ancestor roamed the Earth.
—Ross Andersen, The Atlantic, 24 Feb. 2024
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His ancestors, Catherine and William Brighton, arrived in Utah back in the 1850s.
—Michal Lev-Ram, Fortune, 22 Aug. 2023
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Some of her ancestors also came from Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
—Daniel Gonzalez, The Arizona Republic, 26 Feb. 2024
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Their ancestor, Charles I, was the first to open the royal postal service to public use in 1635 to raise funds.
—Adela Suliman, Washington Post, 27 Sep. 2022
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Indeed, the shades of someone’s ancestor could be just a click away.
—Samantha Baskind, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Apr. 2023
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Our early ancestors must have craned their necks in awe when a lightning bolt lit up the night sky.
—Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 20 Dec. 2023
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The last common ancestor of cats and dogs lived around 45 million years ago.
—Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 18 Feb. 2024
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Her ancestors had come to this big-sky state in a covered wagon.
—Stephanie Hanes, The Christian Science Monitor, 20 Nov. 2023
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For this one to be about, for her to be charged, even by her ancestors, with the future of her people on her shoulders.
—Dessi Gomez, Deadline, 2 Dec. 2024
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Hobbits will not appear in the show, but their ancestor species called the harfoots will.
—Zack Sharf, Variety, 10 Feb. 2022
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The two variants arose around the same time and come from the same immediate ancestor strain.
—Denise Roland, WSJ, 27 Jan. 2022
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When and where did our ancestors first fashion footwear?
—Charles Helm, Discover Magazine, 13 Sep. 2023
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This suggests the ancestors of apes and humans were feasting on soft, sweet fruits, rather than on hard nuts and seeds.
—Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Jan. 2024
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Our ancestors once lit large pyres and worshipped fire gods.
—Daniel Immerwahr, The New Yorker, 14 Jan. 2025
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White South African farmers are living off of fenced land and goods from their racist ancestors.
—Baltimore Sun Editorial Board, Baltimore Sun, 6 Feb. 2025
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This makes the small allele the ancestral allele — a trait that stems from the common ancestor of canids.
—NBC News, 27 Jan. 2022
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And that’s where Martin Scorcese’s ancestors came from.
—As Told To Vogue, Vogue, 5 Apr. 2024
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They are known for some distinct sets of chompers and are not a far cry from their living ancestors.
—Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 24 July 2024
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So tender, the act of attempting to record and make sense of an ancestor’s stories.
—Los Angeles Times, 10 Sep. 2021
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While early human ancestors started making stone tools at least 2.6 million years ago, bone tools took much longer to appear.
—Margherita Bassi, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Mar. 2025
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The ephemerides were the ancestors of astronomical tables, which still exist.
—James Byrne, The Conversation, 17 Mar. 2025
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ancestor.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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