scend

Pluralscends

Formsscends, scending, scended

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The rising motion of water as a wave passes, or the upward lift it gives a vessel, as opposed to pitch, the matching downward movement.

   A sudden scend caught the bow and threw spray over the rail.

   Sailors braced themselves against every scend as the long swell rolled in.

   Similarheave, lift, surge, rise

   Oppositepitch

   Note

   A word with a tangled ancestry: it began as a corruption of send, and its spelling drifted toward ascend, whose sense of rising it took on. Scend and pitch work as a pair. Scend is the lift as the wave passes under the hull, and pitch is the matching drop, so a vessel in a long swell alternates between them. The word can also name the water's own surge, not only the ship's rise.

2. 2
   verbintransitive

   Of a vessel or the sea, to heave upward, as a ship lifted by a passing wave or swell.

   The schooner scended sharply as the swell passed beneath her.

   Watch the bow scend whenever a large wave lifts it.

   Similarheave, rise, lift, surge

   Note

   Here the word takes no object: a ship, a bow or the sea itself scends, and nothing is scended by anything else. When a wave causes the lift, the wave belongs in its own clause (the bow scended as the crest went under), not as a subject acting on the hull. The past form is regular, scended, and the odd spelling comes from the history behind the noun for the wave's lift.

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