Dictionary

ur-ancestor en · NOUN

Etymology

From ur- + ancestor.

Meanings

1. An original ancestor; proto-ancestor.
   • In both, the first awareness of other creatures by the ur-ancestor (and therefore the first true self-consciousness) arrives through a feeling of a crowd on the skin. 2006, Lesley Brill, Crowds, Power, and Transformation in Cinema:
   • Often the ancestors were asked to intercede with the being who wielded the greatest power of all over the Shang people, the ur-ancestor known as the “Lord on High” (shangdi). 2003, Confucius, translated by Edward Slingerland, Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries, translation of original in Old Chinese:
   • These two lineages converged somewhere in the late Paleozoic or early Triassic in a common “Ur-ancestor.” 2011, Dr. Gareth Dyke, Gary Kaiser, Living Dinosaurs: The Evolutionary History of Modern Birds:

Forms