Emily Dickinson Lexicon

DE-SCENT', n. [Fr. descente; L. descensus.]

1. The act of descending; the act of passing from a higher to a lower place, by any form of motion, as by walking, riding, rolling, sliding, sinking or falling.
2. Inclination downward; obliquity; slope; declivity; as, the descent of a hill, or a roof.
3. Progress downward; as, the descent from higher to lower orders of beings. – Locke.
4. Fall from a higher to a lower state or station. – Milton.
5. A landing from ships; invasion of troops from the sea; as, to make a descent on Cuba.
6. A passing from an ancestor to an heir; transmission by succession or inheritance; as, the descent of an estate or a title from the father to son. Descent is lineal, when it proceeds directly from the father to the son to the grandson; collateral, when it proceeds from a man to his brother, nephew, or other collateral representative.
7. A proceeding from an original or progenitor. The Jews boast of their descent from Abraham. Hence,
8. Birth; extraction; lineage as, a noble descent.
9. A generation; a single degree in the scale of genealogy; distance from the common ancestor. No man is a thousand descents from Adam. – Hooker.
10. Offspring; issue; descendants. The care of our descent perplexes most. – Milton.
11. A rank in the scale of subordination. – Milton.
12. Lowest place. – Shak.
13. In music, a passing from a note or sound to one more grave or less acute.