How to Use ancestry in a Sentence

ancestry

noun
Definition of ancestrynext
Synonyms for ancestrynext
  • She claims to be able to trace her ancestry all the way back to the earliest settlers.
  • They claim to be of noble ancestry.
  • Why and how this has come to be has an ancestry of its own.
    — Maya Jasanoff, The New Yorker, 2 May 2022
  • The mother of two, who has ancestry from three area tribes, fell through the cracks both in life and in death.
    — Gillian Flaccus, ajc, 29 Apr. 2022
  • The school’s first pupils in the 1870s were white, often of German ancestry.
    — Jacques Kelly, Baltimore Sun, 2 July 2022
  • Some breeds of dogs in East Asia appear to have retained this ancestry to the present day.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 29 June 2022
  • And everything — the beetles, the rice plant, and you and I — share a common ancestry.
    — David L. Coddon, San Diego Union-Tribune, 17 Mar. 2022
  • Wali has no Ukrainian ancestry and doesn’t speak the language.
    — Shafi Musaddique, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Mar. 2022
  • Most are Black and can trace their ancestry to parts of the world spanning sub-Saharan Africa through the Mediterranean.
    — Alexander Tin, CBS News, 31 Oct. 2023
  • Freeman’s ancestry traces back to the Mormon pioneers who sank roots in Mesa in the late 1870s.
    — Maritza Dominguez, The Arizona Republic, 30 Oct. 2024
  • Pisces is your fourth house of home, family, ancestry, and land.
    — Kirah Tabourn, Condé Nast Traveler, 25 Feb. 2023
  • The tool is available to anyone who wants to find a DNA match or discover their ancestry.
    — María Luisa Paúl, Washington Post, 30 Aug. 2022
  • Number one on the list is Germany, where 20.2% of people claim ancestry.
    — Zachary Smith, cleveland, 29 Dec. 2022
  • Genes do not stay in the lanes of common ancestry but can move much more unpredictably, like zigzagging pieces on a Plinko board.
    — Ben Crair, The New Yorker, 15 July 2022
  • Researchers studied the skulls and determined most of them were of African ancestry.
    — CBS News, 11 Apr. 2022
  • If the police hacked into one of these ancestry databases, that would be a problem.
    — Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times, 22 Nov. 2022
  • Three of the group’s members are targeted by the Nazis owing to their Jewish ancestry.
    — Vulture, 13 Nov. 2023
  • The most common interpretation is to find out the ancestry of mixed breed dogs.
    — Dallas News, 4 Oct. 2022
  • Asian ancestry is also present as a result of the aforementioned slave trade.
    — Brenna Henn, The Conversation, 19 Apr. 2022
  • It’s about what is viewed as the problematic aspects of your background, and that is African ancestry.
    — Rayna Reid Rayford, Essence, 24 Aug. 2022
  • To see the full ancestry income story, visit this link.
    — Zachary Smith, cleveland, 4 Jan. 2023
  • But much of Irsina’s global appeal has to do with ancestry.
    — Silvia Marchetti, CNN, 25 Apr. 2023
  • Woods' mother once referred to her ancestry as Thai, Chinese and Dutch.
    — Jonathan Landrum Jr., Quartz, 13 Feb. 2024
  • What his color is, what is ancestry is, doesn’t matter.
    — Brian Murphy, Washington Post, 17 Dec. 2022
  • He was born in Sweden of Georgian ancestry while his parents were born in Turkey.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Feb. 2024
  • Virgo Check in with your brood or look up your family tree to get details on your ancestry.
    — Lisa Stardust, People.com, 5 Dec. 2024
  • However, Oberon hid her Sri Lankan ancestry and passed for white.
    — Town & Country, 12 Mar. 2023
  • Today, the number of people in Crawley whose ancestry can be traced to Chagos is about 3,000.
    — Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic, 15 June 2022
  • At one point, the book alludes to Rhinelander v. Rhinelander, the 1925 divorce trial in which a white man accused his wife of obscuring her mixed-race ancestry.
    — Alice McDermott, New York Times, 22 June 2022
  • The Mother, of course, is white with good ancestry and Belle inherits brains & ability.
    — Hilton Als, The New Yorker, 16 Dec. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ancestry.' 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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