ancestry

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Series of ancestors

Nouns

1. (family history) ancestry, paternity, maternity, origins, background, parentage, breeding; house, stem, trunk, branch, tree, roots, stock, stirps, pedigree, lineage, blood, kin, line, family, tribe, sept, race, clan; extended, institutional, or nuclear family; spear or sword side, distaff or spindle side; family tree, genealogy, descent, bloodline, extraction, birth; phenotype; forefathers, patriarchs. See precedence, priority.

2. ancestor, predecessor, forebears, forefathers; grandsire, [great-]grand-father; granddam, [great-]grandmother. Informal, gramps, granddad, grandpa, gramma, grandma, granny.

3. [natural, biological, or birth] parent, bioparent, begetter, stepparent, adoptive or surrogate parent; fatherhood, paternity, father, stepfather, sire, paterfamilias, genitor, progenitor, procreator; motherhood, maternity, mother, stepmother, dam, materfamilias. Informal, dad[dy], papa, pa, pop; mom[my], mama, ma; sire, stud[horse], seed horse, top horse (See animal).

4. (one who studies family history) genealogist, archivist, family historian.

5. genetics, eugenics; birth factor, gene, chromosome, genetic code; DNA test, paternity test.

Adjectives — ancestral, family, linear, patriarchal; parental, paternal, fatherly, agnate, maternal, motherly, enate; direct, genealogical, lineal, collateral; hereditary, inherited, genetic, innate.

Phrases — blood is thicker than water; like father [mother], like son [daughter]; honor thy father and mother; the art of being a parent consists of sleeping when the baby isn't looking.

Quotations — The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children (Shakespeare), People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors (Edmund Burke), Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors (Emerson), There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors (Helen Keller), Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers (Lewis Mumford), You are the bows from which your children are as living arrows sent forth (Kahlil Gibran), The family — that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape (Dodie Smith).

Antonyms, See posterity.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

Syn. lineage, heritage, parentage, pedigree; see family 1 .

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) n.

lineage, heredity, background, family tree, stock, pedigree, parentage, heritage, history, blood, roots, progenitors, forefathers. ''A lamp to posterity.''—Sallust.

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun One's ancestors or their character or one's ancestral derivation: birth, blood, bloodline, descent, extraction, family, genealogy, line, lineage, origin, parentage, pedigree, seed, stock. See KIN, PRECEDE.