ANCESTRY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ancestry mean? 

• ANCESTRY (noun)
  The noun ANCESTRY has 2 senses:

1. the descendants of one individual

2. inherited properties shared with others of your bloodline

  Familiarity information: ANCESTRY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ANCESTRY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The descendants of one individual

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

ancestry; blood; blood line; bloodline; descent; line; line of descent; lineage; origin; parentage; pedigree; stemma; stock

Context example:

his entire lineage has been warriors

Hypernyms ("ancestry" is a kind of...):

family tree; genealogy (successive generations of kin)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "ancestry"):

family; family line; folk; kinfolk; kinsfolk; phratry; sept (people descended from a common ancestor)

side (a family line of descent)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Inherited properties shared with others of your bloodline

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

ancestry; derivation; filiation; lineage

Hypernyms ("ancestry" is a kind of...):

hereditary pattern; inheritance ((genetics) attributes acquired via biological heredity from the parents)

Attribute:

purebred (bred for many generations from member of a recognized breed or strain)

crossbred (bred from parents of different varieties or species)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "ancestry"):

descent; extraction; origin (properties attributable to your ancestry)

bloodline; pedigree (ancestry of a purebred animal)

 Context examples 

This individual is the missing link of Native American ancestry.

(DNA from 31,000-year-old milk teeth leads to discovery of new group of ancient Siberians, University of Cambridge)

Studying the patterns of Neanderthal ancestry in present-day humans hints at the structure of human communities more than 50,000 years ago.

(Global human genome study reveals our complex evolutionary history, University of Cambridge)

This study is the first to confirm this association within Hispanic/Latinos, who have shared ancestry that is mixed with European, African and Native American ancestry.

(Study of multiethnic genomes identifies 27 genetic variants associated with disease, National Institutes of Health)

The study also revealed surprising traces of Australasian ancestry in ancient South American Native Americans but no Australasian genetic link was found in North American Native Americans.

(Ancient DNA analysis unlocks secrets of Ice Age tribes in the Americas, University of Cambridge)

The concept does not refer to those of other ancestry, for example, European and South Asian.

(African, NCI Thesaurus)

Denotes a person from any of the islands in the region extending from the west Pacific to the Arafura Sea, north and north-east of Australia. or of that ancestry.

(Melanesian, NCI Thesaurus)

A record of descent or ancestry, particularly of a specific condition or trait, indicating individual family members, their relationships, and their status with respect to the trait or condition.

(Pedigree, NCI Thesaurus)

It occurs predominantly in elderly male patients of southern European ancestry.

(Classic Kaposi Sarcoma, NCI Thesaurus)

Denotes any of the indigenous Chamorro people of Guam and the Mariana Islands or persons of that ancestry.

(Chamorran, NCI Thesaurus)

A group of presumed common ancestry with clear-cut physiological but usually not morphological distinctions.

(Animal Organism Strain, NCI Thesaurus)