ancestor

Definition of ancestor in English English dictionary: One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir; One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a fore father; An earlier type; a progenitor
This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.; {n} one from whom we descend; In Enhanced X-Windows, a widget that has inferior widgets In other words, the superior or predecessor of an inferior widget If W is an inferior of A, then A is an ancestor of W; a person from whom you have descended; A class or parent that contributes (via inheritance) to the definition of an object The ancestors of an object are its class and all the superclasses of its class (in class-based hierarchies) or its parent and the ancestors of its parent (in prototype-based hierarchies); In MGI, this term refers to terms in a hierarchical controlled vocabulary like ones containing Gene Ontology (GO) terms An "ancestor" of a term is a term any number of levels above it in the hierarchy from which it is descended For example, the GO term enzyme [GO: 0003824] is an ancestor to the GO term alcohol dehydrogenase [GO: 0004022] See also: Children, Parent, Sibling; Ancestors of a library unit are itself, its parent, its parent's parent, and so on (Standard is an ancestor of every library unit); An attribute that names a previous version of a fileset This is used to match filesets on a target system If the match_target option is set to true, SD-UX matches the ancestor fileset name to the new fileset name; In bioinformatics, this term refers to terms in a hierarchical controlled vocabulary like ones containing Gene Ontology (GO) terms An "ancestor" of a term is a term any number of levels above it in the hierarchy from which it is descended For example, the GO term enzyme [GO: 0003824] is an ancestor to the GO term alcohol dehydrogenase [GO: 0004022] See also: children, parent sibling; (Data Warehousing Guide; search in this book); Your ancestor is someone from whom you descended: a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, etc; Any organism, population, or species from which some other organism, population, or species is descended by reproduction; a person from whom you descend;grandparents, great-grandparents, 2nd great-grandparents (also called great great- grandparents), 3rd great-grandparents, etc ;direct-line ancestor; forefather; forebear; A member that is directly related to, but higher up the hierarchy than the member under consideration DecisionStream; someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent); (Data Warehousing Guide); The creature used to initialize the population in an avida run; a person who is descended (grandmother, grand-grand-father, etc ); One of a class's superclasses, one of its superclasses's superclasses, etc Sometimes, for convenience, ancestor includes the class itself, along with its proper ancestors; The parent of a node or one of the parent's ancestors In some cases it is convenient if "ancestor" includes the node itself and the term "ancestor-or-self" is sometimes required see ancestor [in DOM2 spec]; (Data Warehousing Guide) [definition #2] (OLAP Services Developer's Guide to the OLAP DML); In OOP, each class that you create has an ancestor even if the only ancestor is TObject An ancestor is a class that is lower (closer to TObject) in the hierarchy chain than the current class A objects' ancestor depends on where in the hierarchy chain the class was derived The objects immediate ancestor is the class that the object inherited in it’s declaration See "Implementation of TObject" for more information; The ancestors of a chain letter are its parents, parents of the parents, parents of etc; Person from whom another person is descended, for example, a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent; In RGD, this term refers to terms in a hierarchical controlled vocabulary like ones containing Gene Ontology (GO) terms An "ancestor" of a term is a term any number of levels above it in the hierarchy from which it is descended For example, the GO term enzyme [GO: 0003824] is an ancestor to the GO term alcohol dehydrogenase [GO: 0004022] See also: Children, Parent, Sibling; A person from which you are descended; An ancestor node of any node A is any node above A in a tree model of a document, where "above" means "toward the root "; {i} forefather, progenitor; forerunner; person who is related to a person existing at a later point in time; animal or plant from which other types evolved; (Law) person from whom an estate has descended; Your ancestors are the people from whom you are descended. our daily lives, so different from those of our ancestors He could trace his ancestors back seven hundred years. descendant; One from whom an estate has descended;-the correlative of heir; One from whom a person is descended, whether on the fathers or mothers side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a fore father; An ancestor of something modern is an earlier thing from which it developed. The direct ancestor of the modern cat was the Kaffir cat of ancient Egypt descendant; An earlier type; a progenitor; as, this fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse; One from whom an estate has descended; the correlative of heir; ascendant; {i} forefather
ancestor worship: religious practice in which dead family members are venerated due to the belief that their spirits can influence the lives of the living
ancestor worship: worship of ancestors
ancestor worship: Religious beliefs or practices that involve addressing prayers or offerings to the spirits of dead relatives. It existed among the ancient Greeks, other Mediterranean peoples, and the ancient Europeans; it also plays a major role in traditional African religions. The dead are related to the family, clan, tribe, or village; mythical ancestors may be included. They may be friendly, or they may be displeased and require propitiation. Commemorative ceremonies are sometimes held at graves or monuments and may include prayers, offerings, sacrifices, and festivals of honor. Worship of individual ancestors is common; it may be combined with communal forms of worship, as in the case of the Roman emperor cult. An ancestor whose deeds are heroic may attain the status of a god. In China and Japan, ancestor worship (more accurately, ancestor reverence) has declined with the decline in the size and importance of kinship groups
ancestor.: eldfather
ancestor.: eldmother
apical ancestor: For clans, a common ancestor, who may be real, fictionalized, or a nonhuman totem
apical ancestor: In kinship and descent, a common ancestor from whom a lineage or clan may trace its descent. The ancestor who is at the apex of the genealogy
common ancestor: an ancestor that two or more descendants have in common
The theory of evolution states that all life on earth has a common ancestor.
an ancestor: forefather
An ancestor: forebear
Ancestors: roots
ancestors: A term used for the parent objects or domains of a managed object
ancestors: All classes above a class in the inheritance hierarchy
ancestors: In Old Testament study this refers to the forebears of the nation of Israel; the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Hebrews, usually Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, and sometimes the twelve sons of Jacob See Biblical Story
ancestors: The parent of a sheet or an output record, and all of its ancestors, recursively
ancestors: Plural of ancestor
ancestors: {i} person from whom other persons are descended in a direct line
ancestors: n The parent of a sheet or an output record, and all of its ancestors, recursively
ancestors: If W is an inferior of A, then A is an ancestor of W
ancestors: forefathers

ancestor

Hyphenation

an·ces·tor

Turkish pronunciation

änsestır

Synonyms

antecedent, antecessor, ascendant, forebear, forefather, foregoer, foremother, forerunner, founder, precursor, primogenitor, progenitor

Antonyms

descendant

Pronunciation

/ˈanˌsestər/ /ˈænˌsɛstɜr/

Etymology

[ 'an-"ses-t&r also - ] (noun.) 13th century. Middle English ancestre, auncestre, also ancessour; the first forms from Old French ancestre, French ancêtre, from the Latin nom. antecessor one who goes before; the last form from Old French ancessor, from Latin acc. antecessorem, from antecedere to go before; ante before + cedere to go. See cede, and compare with antecessor.