# descent

Pronunciation: US say "duh-SENT" /dəˈsɛnt/; UK say "di-SENT" /dɪˈsɛnt/

## Noun

1. The act of coming down from a higher position to a lower one.
   - Simple: The act of moving down from a higher place to a lower one.
   - _The spacecraft's descent through the atmosphere generated intense heat._
   - _She made a slow, careful descent into the valley below._
2. A person's family origins or hereditary line; the ancestors from whom someone is descended.
   - Simple: The family line that a person comes from.
   - _He traces his descent from a long line of farmers._
   - _Citizenship can sometimes be claimed through descent from a grandparent._
3. A fall to a lower status, rank, or condition; a decline.
   - Simple: A change to a worse or lower condition.
   - _The novel charts one family's descent from wealth into poverty._
   - _Critics traced the city's descent into lawlessness over the decade._
4. A route or path leading downward from a place.
   - Simple: A path or route that leads downward.
   - _Hikers warned us that the southern descent was blocked by rockfall._
   - _The only descent into the canyon was a narrow, winding trail._
5. A sloping passage or incline that runs downward.
   - Simple: A slope that goes downward.
   - _The driveway ended in a sharp descent toward the garage._
   - _Engineers graded the descent so that trucks could brake safely._
6. A sudden hostile attack or invasion of a place.
   - Simple: A sudden attack on a place by an enemy.
   - _Coastal towns lived in dread of a sudden descent by pirates._
   - _The general planned a descent on the enemy's supply lines._
7. In mathematics, a method for assembling global structures from compatible local pieces, generalizing the idea of gluing.
   - Simple: In math, a way of building one whole object by joining smaller matching pieces.
   - _The theorem uses descent to glue locally defined functions into a single global one._
   - _Faithfully flat descent allows the construction of objects from local data._

## Origin

From Middle English and Anglo-Norman descente, from Anglo-Norman descendre ("to descend"); compare ascent and ascend. It is a doublet of desant.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/descent (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).