Definition of Descent

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Descent

The act of descending, or passing downward; change of place from higher to lower.

Incursion; sudden attack; especially, hostile invasion from sea; -- often followed by upon or on; as, to make a descent upon the enemy.

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.

Derivation, as from an ancestor; procedure by generation; lineage; birth; extraction.

Transmission of an estate by inheritance, usually, but not necessarily, in the descending line; title to inherit an estate by reason of consanguinity.

Inclination downward; a descending way; inclined or sloping surface; declivity; slope; as, a steep descent.

That which is descended; descendants; issue.

A step or remove downward in any scale of gradation; a degree in the scale of genealogy; a generation.

Lowest place; extreme downward place.

A passing from a higher to a lower tone.

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Descent Quotations

Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose Bierce

The descent to Hades is the same from every place.
Anaxagoras

The descent to the infernal regions is easy enough, but to retrace one's steps, and reach the air above, there's the rub.
Virgil

In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.
C. Wright Mills

After 1980, you never heard reference to space again. Surface, the most convincing evidence of the descent into materialism, became the focus of design. Space disappeared.
Arthur Erickson

Deconstructing the concept of race not only conflicts with people's tendency to classify and build family histories according to common descent but also ignores the work of biologists studying non-human species.
J. Philippe Rushton

No country in Europe has a larger proportion of men and women of immigrant descent, mainly from the African continent and mainly Muslim: an estimated six to seven million of them, or more than 10% of the population.
Timothy Garton Ash

After the departure of the land parties, I embarked with six men on thursday, the 21st april, on board my newly made boat and began the descent of the river.
William Henry Ashley

I'm of Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese descent, and was raised on Hawaii.
Tia Carrere

Descent Translations

descent in Dutch is afdaling
descent in German is Abstieg {m}
descent in Latin is progenies, successio
descent in Portuguese is descida
descent in Spanish is bajada, descenso

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