Descent
/dɪˈsɛnt/noun
The act of moving downward or coming from an ancestor or source.
Did you know?Descent comes from Latin descendere, and the same deep root behind the “scand-” in descendere also lives on in words like ascend and scandent, where motion itself was once imagined as a kind of sacred stepping.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*skand-
“to climb, leap, mount”
Latin
Latin
scandere
“to climb, mount, step onto”
Latin
Latin
descendere
“to climb down, descend”
Old French
Old French
descendre
“to go down, descend”
Middle English
English
descente
“a downward movement; a coming down”
Modern English
English
descent
“the act of descending; lineage or ancestry”