Ascending

How to spell ascending

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ascending

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ascending mean?

1. adjectiveMoving or sloping upward, or arranged in order from lowest to highest.

Ascending in a sentence

• The spreadsheet sorts the invoices in ascending order by date.

• The ascending road forced the cyclists to drop into a low gear.

Where does ascending come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb ascendere, which meant literally 'to climb up', formed from the prefix ad- 'to, toward' and the verb scandere 'to climb'. English took it in through Old French during the 1300s, first as a verb describing physical climbing or rising, and later extending to anything arranged in rising order, such as numbers, music, or rank. The same scandere root sits behind a whole family of relatives, including 'descend', 'transcend', and even 'scan', which originally referred to climbing through the metrical feet of a line of poetry. The spelling trap is the silent 'c' after the 's': the cluster 'sc' is sounded simply as 's', a fossil of the Latin scandere that no longer matches the way we say it.

How the word is built

• a- (to, toward; from Latin ad-)
• scend (climb, from Latin scandere)
• -ing (present participle suffix)