Noun

(en noun)

One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Old soldiers? , passage=Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine. The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless.}}

An earlier type; a progenitor

(legal) One from whom an estate has descended;—the correlative of heir.

(figuratively) One who had the same role or function in former times.

* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=October 1, author=Saj Chowdhury, work=BBC Sport

, title= Wolverhampton 1-2 Newcastle , passage=The Magpies are unbeaten and enjoying their best run since 1994, although few would have thought the class of 2011 would come close to emulating their ancestors .}}

Noun

(en noun)

An ancestor.

* [1906] 2004, Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, Ethel Wedgwood tr.

Sirs, I am quite sure that the King of England's forbears rightly and justly lost the conquered lands that I hold [...]

* [1936] 2004, Raymond William Firth, We the Tikopia [http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=Eiji-EnuhXUC&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&sig=aB2VV0fcWv6lkQPQatQQbDhlm_8]

One does not take one’s family name therefrom, and again the position of the mother in that group is determined through her father and his male forbears in turn; this too is a patrilineal group.

* 1997, H. L. Hix, Understanding W. S. Merwin [http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=8JIveUt8StQC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&sig=_AETFoZUYlti38_Va0zOHD4yZTk]

Beginning with the bald declaration “I think I was cold in the womb,” the speaker in “The Forbears'” then decides that his brother (who died soon after birth) must also have been cold in the womb, like his grandfather John and the ' forbears who antedated John.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)

, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}