Word Direct Answers

What does "descent" mean?

Descent: Incursion; sudden attack; especially, hostile invasion from sea; - - often followed by upon or on; as, to make a descent upon the enemy. The United Provinces . . . ordered public prayer to God, when they feared that the French and English fleets would make a descent upon their coasts. Jortin.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Progress downward, as in station, virtue, as in station, virtue, and the like, from a higher to a lower state, from a higher to a lower state, from the more to the less important, from the better to the worse, etc.
  2. 3.Derivation, as from an ancestor; procedure by generation; lineage; birth; extraction. Dryden.
  3. 4.(Law) Transmission of an estate by inheritance, usually, but not necessarily, in the descending line; title to inherit an estate by reason of consanguinity. Abbott.
  4. 5.Inclination downward; a descending way; inclined or sloping surface; declivity; slope; as, a steep descent.
  5. 6.That which is descended; descendants; issue. If care of our descent perplex us most, Which must be born to certain woe. Milton.
  6. 7.A step or remove downward in any scale of gradation; a degree in the scale of genealogy; a generation. No man living is a thousand descents removed from Adam himself. Hooker.
  7. 8.Lowest place; extreme downward place. [R.] And from the extremest upward of thy head, To the descent and dust below thy foot. Shak.
  8. 9.(Mus.) A passing from a higher to a lower tone.

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