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# descent

«descent» in Mova's school dictionary: **a way or act of going down, like going down a hill…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a descent, descents; also uncountable)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A descent is a way or act of going down, like going down a hill, stairs or from the sky. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#m1)

2) Descent means your family background, the people and places your family comes from. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#m2)

3) A descent can be a slope that goes downward. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In maths and geography descent is about going down: a plane begins its descent, a climber's descent of a mountain; height goes down. In history and social studies descent means family origin. Phrases: begin the descent, of Irish descent, a steep descent, descent from.

### examples

- The plane began its descent to the airport. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#x1)
- The climbers made a slow descent down the icy mountain. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#x2)
- The path has a steep descent to the beach. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#x3)
- She is of Italian descent. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#x4)
- The balloon's descent took ten minutes. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#x5)
- On the descent the bus went very slowly. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#x6)
- In later times the noblest Theban families proudly claimed their descent from these mighty earth-born warriors. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/#x7)

### note

Do not confuse with "decent" (good enough, polite) or "dissent" (disagreeing). Verb: descend; opposite: ascent. In maths: a descent from 800 m to 300 m is a drop of 500 m; if it took 10 minutes, the height fell 50 m per minute.

### In the corpora

- [Red-green colour blindness affects about 1 in 12 men of European descent.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/42-olympiad-picture-puzzles/15/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «descent» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/descent/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.