ancestry

Other forms of ancestry

plural

ancestries·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about ancestry

What does ancestry mean?

ancestry means "the descendants of one individual". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in ancestry?

ancestry has 3 syllables: an-ce-stry. The stress falls on "an". In IPA it is /ˈænsɛstɹi/.

What is another word for ancestry?

Close synonyms include lineage, line, line of descent, descent, bloodline. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ancestry a common word?

ancestry is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.