Ancestor path

All elements that are higher up in the XML hierarchy, that will be returned by the XPath selector ancestor::*. In the following example, the ancestor path of the link element contains <paragraph> and <article>. In case of the href attribute, this would also contain the <link> element.

<article>
<paragraph>The quick <link href="http://getfirefox.com">Firefox</link>
       jumps over the lazy dog.</paragraph>
</article>

A related term is "parent", which means the nearest ancestor.