ancestor

noun

1. One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather; a forebear.

   “Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine. The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless.”

2. An earlier type; a progenitor.

   “This fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.”

   “Some of the descendants of this cyclopean ancestor left their burrows and started to swim.”

3. One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.
4. (figuratively)One who had the same role or function in former times.

   “The Magpies are unbeaten and enjoying their best run since 1994, although few would have thought the class of 2011 would come close to emulating their ancestors.”

5. A word or phrase which serves as the origin of a term in another language.

verb

1. (transitive)To be an ancestor of.

   “Her own grandfather had been a Virginian, a descendant of Pocahontas, of course, Pocahontas having been created by Divine Providence for the specific purpose of ancestoring Virginians.”

   “The human population of this earth is descended from a most adaptable population, that which originated living matter and then proceeded through continuous specific change to become the population that ancestored man.”

   “How, that is, could ancestoring Elizabeth become a relational property of James's, when there was, when Elizabeth began to exist, no James to have this property?”