ancestral

Ancestral things have been around so long that they once belonged to your ancestors, the family members who lived before your grandparents were born.

Your ancestral home is the place your great-grandparents or great-great-uncle once lived. You can also use this adjective to describe things that someone inherited from ancestors, like your friend’s ancestral beach cottage or your mom’s ancestral set of silverware. Ancestral comes from the Late Latin antecessor, “predecessor,” or literally “forgoer,” from the root antecedere, “to precede.”