to descend
47
4.0
- verb
- /dɪˈsɛnd/
:
descender de
- Kieran felt pride in the fact that he was descended from one of the original survey teams.
- descended from people
- directly descended from
- descended from early settlers
England's new king, William the Conqueror, was himself descended from a Viking adventurer.
- England's new king, William the Conqueror, was himself descended from a Viking adventurer.
- They may have shared the earth with them, but we cannot say that we descended from them.
- It's claimed that they were both descended from the Greek God of medicine, a Skeplis.
- And you know, the perpetrator or the John or Jane Doe is descended from that marriage.
- He he thanked God that the country had the same religion and were descended from the same stock.
- But dogs, the way the dogs got, you know, tamed and they, they descended from wolves over thousands and thousands of years.
- And when you compare their DNA to ours, now we know that we did not descend, for example, from Neanderthal.
- And Camilla is what he calls a born mistress descended from a royal plaything.
- Because we descended and inherited genetics from ruthless people.
- They're learned spokespersons claimed to be descended from refugees of fallen Troy, thus like the Romans.
Examples
-
"If you believe in the Bible, we're all descended from Adam and Eve.
Fiction book (1995) -
You and I are descended from the great sheepdogs.
-
That means that your teeth are directly descended from Neanderthals.
-
In contrast, the Protestant majority views itself as descended from English and Scots immigrants.
Academic text (1997) -
England's new king, William the Conqueror, was himself descended from a Viking adventurer.
-
Many people believe they descend from ancient warriors or nobility.
-
She is proud to be descended from a well-known family of artists.
-
Historians have traced how our community descended from the early settlers of this region.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Have origins in a place, family or social group
53
4.0
Come from an earlier family, group, or language
Surface Forms
Morphology
descend = de + scend
Although analyzable as de- + scend, 'scend' is not a standalone English word and the prefixal analysis is not productive knowledge for most learners, so the meaning cannot be reliably derived from its parts.
Etymology
Descend also means to 'come from' a family line, using the image of coming 'down' a family tree from ancestors above you. The parts de- 'down' and scendere 'to climb' help you remember that to 'descend from' someone is to come 'down' the line of your family.