Ascend

How to spell ascend

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ascend

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ascend mean?

1. verbTo move upward, or to rise to a higher position, level, or rank.

Ascend in a sentence

• The climbers planned to ascend the north face before dawn.

• Prices tend to ascend steadily during the holiday season.

Where does ascend come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb ascendere, which meant 'to climb up' or 'to go up'. It was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'up toward', joined to the verb scandere, meaning 'to climb'. English took it in during the 1300s, originally in religious and devotional writing about rising heavenwards, before it broadened into the everyday sense of moving upward in space, rank, or order. The same scandere root climbs through several relatives in English, including 'descend' (to climb down), 'transcend' (to climb beyond), and 'scandal', whose Greek and Latin ancestors referred to a stumbling trap. Remember that the silent middle keeps the -sc- pairing from scandere, and the ending is -end, not -ant, which is the usual spelling slip.

How the word is built

• a- (from ad-: to, up)
• scend (from scandere: to climb)