descend

Etymology

From Middle English decenden, borrowed from Old French descendre, from Latin descendere, past participle descensus (“to come down, go down, fall, sink”), from de- (“down”) + scandere (“to climb”). See scan, scandent. Compare ascend, condescend, transcend.

verb

1. (intransitive) To pass from a higher to a lower place; to move downwards; to come or go down in any way, for example by falling, flowing, walking, climbing etc.
   Rudy felt a gust of fear rise in his chest, and he looked again in the mirror, but the hangar and stable were now beyond the rise, out of sight, he was descending so fast. 2002, John Griesemer, No One Thinks of Greenland: A Novel
   We will here descend to matters of later date.
2. (intransitive, poetic) To enter mentally; to retire.
3. (intransitive, with on or upon) To make an attack, or incursion, as if from a vantage ground; to come suddenly and with violence.
   more aircraft descending on us than had done during previous visits from the snoopers in their usual ones and twos. 2013, Deltrice Alfred Grossmith, Arctic Warriors: A Personal Account of Convoy PQ18
   1726, Alexander Pope, Odyssey:
   And on the suitors let thy wrath descend.
4. (intransitive) To come down to a lower, less fortunate, humbler, less virtuous, or worse, state or rank; to lower or abase oneself
   He descended from his high estate.
   He […] began to descend to familiar questions, endeavouring to accommodate his discourse to the grossness of rustic understandings. August 25, 1759, Samuel Johnson, The Idler No. 71
5. (intransitive) To pass from the more general or important to the specific or less important matters to be considered.
6. (intransitive) To come down, as from a source, original, or stock
7. to be derived (from)
8. to proceed by generation or by transmission; to happen by inheritance.
   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. 1890, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 2, page 217
   The beggar may descend from a prince.
   A crown descends to the heir.
9. (intransitive, astronomy) To move toward the south, or to the southward.
10. (intransitive, music) To fall in pitch; to pass from a higher to a lower tone.
11. (transitive) To go down upon or along; to pass from a higher to a lower part of
    they descended the river in boats; to descend a ladder