How to Use ancestral in a Sentence

ancestral

adjective
Definition of ancestralnext
Synonyms for ancestralnext
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • The Eldon house that Wood depicted, built in 1881, wasn’t the ancestral home of sturdy agrarians.
    — Daniel Immerwahr, The New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2023
  • In the 1990s, some communities native to the Mount Kenya region were forced out of their ancestral homes in the forest during a land grab by the government.
    — Kang-Chun Cheng, The Christian Science Monitor, 1 Dec. 2023
  • Kim says that people visit ancestral gravesites to perform rituals, clean the area, and offer food and drinks as a sign of respect.
    — Jamie Ballard, Woman's Day, 20 July 2023
  • Phillips, who lost a multigenerational ancestral home in the fires, says enough has been lost and taken from Lahaina.
    — Sakshi Venkatraman, NBC News, 25 Aug. 2023
  • The project follows Anand, a Mumbai call center employee who has to spend some time in his ancestral village after the death of his father.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 31 Aug. 2023
  • Ashen military officers likened the scenes to pogroms that haunt the ancestral memories of many Israelis.
    — Laura King, Los Angeles Times, 17 Oct. 2023
  • For others, canoe paddling is a part of their ancestral lineage.
    — Elahe Izadi, Anchorage Daily News, 3 Sep. 2023
  • But where many would make a pilgrimage every few years to their ancestral homeland, Parla has gone a few steps further.
    — Liam Hess, Vogue, 8 Mar. 2023
  • For decades, Guatemalans living in the U.S. have helped shore up their ancestral nation’s revenue stream by sending back remittances.
    — Elvia Limón, Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2023
  • Some when famine struck, like my ancestral family in Ireland.
    — USA TODAY, 8 Mar. 2024
  • Today, more and more descendants of enslaved Africans are using DNA testing to trace their roots to their ancestral homelands.
    — Tyrone Beason, Los Angeles Times, 21 Sep. 2023
  • The 25th anniversary of the peace treaty will be celebrated this April, with Biden expected to make a trip to his ancestral homeland in order to mark the occasion.
    — Diego Lasarte, Quartz, 27 Feb. 2023
  • Because those rights were passed down through an ancestral trust, the white men who married Osage women were in line for an inheritance.
    — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 19 Oct. 2023
  • The mining on the ancestral lands of the Kootenai people, (known as Ktunaxa in British Columbia), has become a longstanding issue.
    — Jim Robbins, New York Times, 11 July 2023
  • To achieve empowerment, Betty has to descend to her ancestral depths.
    — John Hopewell, Variety, 27 Oct. 2023
  • Davis’s sister was murdered in 2021, and Davis is among those who venerate their late family members in front of a baobab tree that has become their ancestral tree.
    — Chika Oduah, Essence, 16 Nov. 2023
  • In 1855, members of these tribes traded their ancestral lands for continued rights to fish, hunt and gather in territories claimed by the United States.
    — Adam M. Sowards, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 May 2023
  • The ancestral beverage has deep roots in Indigenous Ecuadorian culture, dating back to the pre-Columbian era.
    — Jessica Chapel, Condé Nast Traveler, 1 Dec. 2023

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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