Among the company were people who made records of the fauna, flora and the inhabitants of Punt, spiritual forebears of the Napoleonic scientists who wrote their Déscriptions of Egypt.

Their publications commonly cite Joseph Marsh (1802-1863) rather than Wilson as their spiritual forebear, though Marsh's role in the formation of the group is not clearly documented.

French Flip-Flop France, the country whose telephone-based Minitel information system was the spiritual forebear of America Online, has decided that the Internet is not really an act of American cultural aggression.

Like their predecessors, today's Causeries members are intelligent women eager to find a place for themselves in the world, albeit one very different from that inhabited by their spiritual forebears.

His spiritual forebears come from another world.

Hays is almost compulsively aware of his spiritual and professional forebears.

Another of the Fast's spiritual forebears was the gremlin on the gasoline cap of American Motors' legendarily ugly 1970's compact of the same name.

The shrewd though illiterate peasant who has to be shown concrete evidence is the spiritual forebear of the scientist.

One of the zuihitsu makes a mystical connection between her and one of her spiritual forebears so neat that you can almost believe the whole universe lives by words.

Not Mark Twain but Willa Cather and O. E. Rolvaag are Eiseley's spiritual forebears.