noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The emphasis of the importance of one's foremothers, forefathers or lineage: their veneration (in a nonreligious sense). uncountable
2. 2
   Ancestor worship. uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms

ancestralismancestor worship

Etymology

From ancestor + -ism. Compare atavism, whose formation in French (before English borrowed it) had underlying parallel.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.