descend
To pass from a higher to a lower part of (something, such as a flight of stairs or a slope); to go down along or upon.
[I]f, after descending a flight of stairs, we attempt inadvertently to take another step in the manner of the former ones, the shock is extreamly rude and disagreeable; and by no art, can we cause such a shock by the same means, when we expect and prepare for it.
I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than the flight of an eagle, and quickly lost among the undulations of the sea of ice.
Of a flight of stairs, a road, etc.: to lead down (a hill, a slope, etc.).
(archaic) To move (someone or something) from a higher to a lower place or position; to bring or send (someone or something) down.
To physically move or pass from a higher to a lower place or position; to come or go down in any way, such as by climbing, falling, flowing, walking, etc.; to move downwards; to fall, to sink.
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
Dark Clouds bring Waters, when the bright bring none / Yea, dark or bright, if they their Silver drops / Cause to descend, the Earth, by yielding crops, / Gives praise to both, and carpeth not at either, / But treasures up the Fruit they yield together: […]
The air was cold, and the rain again began to descend: we entered the hut, the fiend with an air of exultation, I with a heavy heart and depressed spirits.
(astrology) Of a zodiac sign: to move away from the zenith towards the horizon; to sink; also, of a planet: to move to a place where it has less astrological significance.
(astronomy) Of a celestial body: to move away from the zenith towards the horizon; to sink; also, to move towards the south.
(biology, physiology) Of a body part: to move downwards, especially during development of the embryo; specifically, of the testes of a mammal: to move downwards from the abdominal cavity into the scrotum.
(chemistry, obsolete) Of a liquid substance: to distil out from another substance and gather at the bottom of a container; also, to distil a substance to obtain another liquid substance in this manner.
To slope or stretch downwards.
Now pass'd the rugged road, they journey down / The cavern'd way descending to the town, […]
(chiefly historical) To alight from a carriage, a horse, etc.; also, to disembark from a vessel; to land.
Their sails they loos'd, they lash'd the mast aside, / And cast their anchors, and the cables ty'd: / Then on the breezy shore descending, join / In grateful banquet o'er the rosy wine.
About ten o'clock a horse and wagon was descried making a slow approach to the camp over the prairie. […] When the conveyance at length drew up to Mr. Thompson's door, the gentleman descended with great deliberation, straightened himself up, rubbed his hands, and beaming satisfaction from every part of his radiant frame, advanced to the group that was gathered to welcome him, and which had saluted him by name as soon as he came within hearing.
(figurative) To come or go down, or reduce, in intensity or some other quality.
(figurative) Of a physical thing (such as a a cloud or storm) or a (generally negative) immaterial thing (such as darkness, gloom, or silence): to settle upon and start to affect a person or place.
And she managed to keep the good news to herself, though it would seem that the most careless observer might have seen by her springing step and her radiant countenance that some fine piece of good fortune had descended upon her.
(figurative) In speech or writing: to proceed from one matter to another; especially, to pass from more general or important to specific or less important matters to be considered.
(figurative) Of a situation: to become worse; to decline, to deteriorate.
(figurative) To make an attack or incursion, from or as if from a vantage ground; to come suddenly and with violence.
(figurative) To arrive suddenly or unexpectedly, especially in a manner that causes disruption or inconvenience.
(figurative) To come down to a humbler or less fortunate, or a worse or less virtuous, rank or state; to abase or lower oneself; to condescend or stoop to something.
But what will not Ambition and Revenge / Descend to? who aspires must down as low / As high he soard, obnoxious first or last / To basest things.
Not oft to smile descendeth he, / And when he doth 'tis sad to see / That he but mocks at Misery.
(figurative, chiefly poetic or religion) To mentally enter a state of (deep) meditation or thought; to retire.
[He] with holiest Meditations fed, / Into himself descended, and at once / All his great work to come before him set; […]
(figurative, mathematics) Of a sequence or series: to proceed from higher to lower values.
(figurative, music) To pass from a higher to a lower note or tone; to fall in pitch.
(obsolete, rare) To trace (a lineage) from earlier to later generations.
Of a characteristic: to be transmitted from a parent to a child.
To come down or derive from an ancestor or ancestral stock, or a source; to originate, to stem.
An hero, descended from a race of Kings, must have despised the base Isaurian who was invested with the Roman purple, without any endowments of mind or body, without any advantages of royal birth, or superior qualifications.
They came over to Massachusetts Bay in another vessel, and thus escaped the onus of that brevet nobility under which the successors of the Mayflower Pilgrims had descended.
Didn't you know? I am descended in the female line from the Court de Lauria who came over to England in the suite of Philip the Second and married a maid of honour of Queen Mary.
(chiefly law) Of property, a right, etc.: to pass down to a generation, a person, etc., by inheritance.
As to eleemosynary corporations, by the dotation the founder and his heirs are of common right the legal visitors, to see that that property is rightly employed, which would otherwise have descended to the visitor himself: […]
The possession of the sacred fire and of the ancestral sticks, carrying with it both political authority and priestly dignity, descends in the male line, and hence generally passes from father to son.
(archaic) Instance of descending; sloping incline or passage; way down; decline, etc.
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