Descend

How to spell descend

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce descend

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does descend mean?

1. verbTo move or go down from a higher position to a lower one.
2. verbTo be related to or come down from an ancestor or earlier source.

Descend in a sentence

• The pilot began to descend toward the runway.

• The family claims to descend from a medieval knight.

• Hikers must descend the trail before dark.

• Many modern words descend from older Latin roots.

Where does descend come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin descendere, which combined de-, meaning 'down', with scandere, meaning 'to climb' or 'to mount'. The literal sense was therefore 'to climb down', the exact opposite of ascendere, 'to climb up'. English took the word in the 1300s through Old French descendre, keeping both the physical meaning of moving downward and the figurative one of being handed down from ancestors. The same scandere root still hides inside the everyday relatives 'ascend', 'scale' (a ladder or musical scale), and 'echelon'. The spelling trap is the silent-feeling middle: the -sc- and the final -nd are both fully there, even though the word sounds like a simple 'di-send'.

How the word is built

• de- (down)
• -scend (from Latin scandere: to climb)