How to Use ancestral in a Sentence

ancestral

adjective
  • This part of Wyoming is now part of the ancestral lands of the Eastern Shoshone.
    Eli Wizevich, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Dec. 2024
  • The region is also part of the ancestral lands of the native Ute Tribes.
    Krista Simmons, Sunset Magazine, 13 Oct. 2022
  • The 300-member tribe has fought to get at least part of their ancestral lands back ever since.
    Debra Utacia Krol, The Arizona Republic, 18 June 2024
  • Now, plans are being finalized to lay the king to rest in ancestral land.
    Sean Kingsley, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Oct. 2022
  • Throughout the process, the tribe had full oversight of their ancestral heritage sites.
    Celina Tebor, USA TODAY, 1 Apr. 2022
  • The star of the space is a mid-18th-century French Baroque chest-on-chest that's flanked by a pair of late Qing dynasty ancestral portraits.
    Jessica Cherner, House Beautiful, 31 May 2023
  • The food in her kitchen in North Homeland tasted like that of her ancestral homeland.
    Dillon Mullan, Baltimore Sun, 20 Feb. 2023
  • But Matobo is home to many gifts—as an ancestral home of the African Bushmen, the San people, there are over 2,000 sites of rock art to take in.
    Caitlin Morton, Condé Nast Traveler, 24 Oct. 2023
  • Yavapai-Apache had been purchasing the land parcels since the 1990s with the goal of swapping them to rebuild more of its ancestral lands.
    Debra Utacia Krol, The Arizona Republic, 4 Nov. 2024
  • Each dish can be a kind of story that reflects the person who eats it—one that attaches a meal to the ancestral.
    Adrienne Lafrance, The Atlantic, 29 Mar. 2022
  • The canoes were found in a section of lakebed in the ancestral territory of the Ho-Chunk Nation.
    Julia Binswanger, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 June 2024
  • The waters of the Jones Falls might have improved enough to trigger otters to return to an ancestral area.
    Dan Rodricks, Baltimore Sun, 13 Aug. 2024
  • Instead, it's been argued that this moment marked the return of Jews to their ancestral land.
    Nicole Froio, refinery29.com, 12 Nov. 2023
  • Dam removals, such as the Bloede on the Patapsco in 2018, have allowed the shad to return to their ancestral waters.
    Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, 4 Apr. 2023
  • But there is a small crack in the landscape that could bring shattering change to this historic ancestral home.
    Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 Jan. 2023
  • This is the second time in recent years the Wiyot tribe has acquired ancestral lands.
    Freddy Brewster, Los Angeles Times, 22 Aug. 2022
  • The Spencers, known today as the ancestral line to which Diana, Princess of Wales belonged, were one such family.
    Allan Massie, wsj.com, 14 Apr. 2023
  • Utes from Colorado and Utah where pushed off their ancestral lands and onto the reservation.
    Courtney Tanner, The Salt Lake Tribune, 1 Sep. 2023
  • Many tribes across the country have sought to acquire their ancestral land and co-manage public land.
    Janie Har, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 June 2022
  • The wave is of great ancestral importance to Native Hawaiians, and respect must be paid and earned.
    Talya Minsberg Gabriella Angotti-Jones, New York Times, 22 Dec. 2022
  • That ancestral home is in the village of Chilham and is itself called Chilham Castle.
    John Kelly, Washington Post, 15 July 2023
  • Shrimp boils are nice and all, but, for the Friends' purposes, returning to ancestral ground is even better.
    Chris Vognar, Chron, 17 Mar. 2023
  • This was a reference to the family’s ancestral home back in the county of Kent in southeast England.
    John Kelly, Washington Post, 15 July 2023
  • Perhaps on a visit to my ancestral homeland, those cracks would begin to fill.
    Iman Hariri-Kia, Allure, 3 Oct. 2023
  • In exchange for a wad of spit and $1,000, the company gave users reports on their ancestral makeup and data about a few health risks.
    Lila MacLellan, Fortune, 17 Oct. 2024
  • One highlight in the show is an ancient depiction of a lacrosse game in Choctaw ancestral land in what is now Alabama.
    Frank Vaisvilas, Journal Sentinel, 15 Jan. 2024
  • Out in the Black Hills, on long plains and gray peaks, and in all the small towns that harbor the ancestral memory of secession, Absaroka is still just a state of mind.
    Eli Wizevich, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Aug. 2024
  • And as teased at the end of season 1, soldiers of the Seanchan Empire have arrived from across the sea in order to conquer their ancestral homeland.
    Christian Holub, EW.com, 24 May 2023
  • Newsom said the state should allow for more co-management of tribes’ ancestral lands.
    From Usa Today Network and Wire Reports, USA TODAY, 11 Oct. 2022
  • The principle emotion during that celebration was gratitude that finally tribes had triumphed in the effort to restore their ancestral lands, and hope that the next phase is going to go just as well.
    Dana Taylor, USA TODAY, 6 Dec. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ancestral.' 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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