a. Forms: 6 auncetrell, 6–7 -cestrell, 6 -cestrall, 6–9 ancestrel, 8– ancestral. [a. OFr. ancestrel, ancêtrel, AFr. auncestrel, f. ancestre: see ANCESTOR and -AL 1.]
1. Of, belonging to, or inherited from ancestors.
1579. J. Stubbes, Gaping Gulf, D iv. A faultor prince of Rome … that may be warranted to vs and our heyres for an enemy auncestrell.
1644. Howell, Lett. (1688), IV. xi. 449 (R.). History is the great Looking-glass, through which we may behold with ancestral eyes … Actions of ages pass’d.
1797. Coleridge, Kubla Khan. Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war.
1857. H. Reed, Lect. Brit. Poets, I. iii. 47. The ancestral position of Chaucer in the annals of our poetry makes it important to fix in the mind a distinct idea of the period of time in which he flourished.
1879. O’Connor, Beaconsfield, ix. 235. Glowing accounts of the extent of their ancestral acres and the splendour of their ancestral halls.
b. esp. in Law. (Often written ancestrel as in OFr.)
1523. Fitzherb., Surv., 12. These tenauntes maye holde their landes by dyuers tenures … as by … franke almoyne, homage, auncetrell.
c. 1570. Thynne, Pride & Lowl. (1841), 16. His cause was good, his title auncestrell.
1768. Blackstone, Comm., III. 186. Another ancestrel writ … to establish an equal division of the land … on the death of an ancestor.
1809. Tomlins, Law Dict., 4 L a/1. Homage ancestrel is where a man and his ancestors have time out of mind held their land of the lord by Homage.
2. Biol. Of, pertaining to, or constituting the original type, or any earlier type, whence existing forms are supposed to have been ‘developed.’
1862. Darwin, Orchids, vii. 288. All homologous parts or organs, however much diversified, are modifications of one and the same ancestral organ.
1880. Haughton, Phys. Geog., vi. 282. Oreodon is the type of a family of ancestral pigs.
1881. Flower, in Nature, No. 619. 438/1. The survival of individuals retaining the generalised or ancestral characters of a race from which two branches have separated and taken opposite lines of modification.
