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Ancestry vs Ethnicity - What's the difference?

ancestry | ethnicity |

As nouns the difference between ancestry and ethnicity

is that ancestry is condition as to ancestors; ancestral lineage; hence, birth or honorable descent while ethnicity is the common characteristics of a group of people.

ancestry

English

Alternative forms

* ancestrie (obsolete) * auncestrie (obsolete) * auncestry (obsolete)

Noun

(ancestries)
  • Condition as to ancestors; ancestral lineage; hence, birth or honorable descent.
  • Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. -Addison.
  • A series of ancestors or progenitors; lineage, or those who compose the line of natural descent.
  • ethnicity

    English

    Noun

    (ethnicities)
  • The common characteristics of a group of people.
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April
  • , author=(Jan Sapp) , title=Race Finished , volume=100, issue=2, page=164 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity , genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?}}
  • An ethnic group.