MEANING
belonging to or inherited from earlier generations of a family or lineage
Use it for
Words that belong together
- ancestral home
- ancestral land
- ancestral portraits
On the page
She returned to the ancestral home after forty years.
The ancestral portraits watched over the dining room.
No one remembered how the family had acquired its ancestral land.
Related words
Word forms
- Base
- ancestral
Usage notes
Primary curation section: Gothic. Marks connection to ancestors, not simply great age. Also used of ancestral species or populations. Normally non-gradable; no standard comparative or superlative. Related noun: ancestor.
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