ancestral

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Now in her 80s, Lami Ezekiel remembers construction crews arriving in her ancestral home in Maitama, as it was destroyed to build Nigeria's capital, Abuja.

From BBC • Apr. 3, 2026

The granddaughter of a traumatized mouse may still carry a certain characteristic, but her fundamental mousiness isn’t a result of such highly specific ancestral experiences, which operate in the narrowest crevices of evolution.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 20, 2026

By comparing how these gene clusters are arranged across hundreds of plant genomes and tracing their patterns from ancestral species to modern plants, they were able to detect conserved elements that earlier methods had missed.

From Science Daily • Mar. 14, 2026

She questions minor inconsistencies in divorce paperwork from Erika Kirk’s first marriage and ancestral records to dispute Kirk’s narrative that she was primarily raised by a “strong, independent single mother.”

From Salon • Mar. 4, 2026

Now surely, since Africa harbors 1,500 languages today, it is big enough to have harbored more than four ancestral languages thousands of years ago.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond