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.

Inclination downward; obliquity; slope; declivity; as the descent of a hill, or a roof.

Progress downward; as the descent from higher to lower orders of beings.

Fall from a higher to a lower state or station.

A landing from ships; invasion of troops from the sea; as, to make a descent on Cuba.

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 the son. Descent is lineal, when it proceeds directly from the father to the son, and from the son to the grandson; collateral, when it proceeds from a man to his brother, nephew or other collateral representative.

A proceeding from an original or progenitor. The Jews boast of their descent from Abraham. Hence,

Birth; extraction; lineage; as a noble descent.

A generation; a single degree in the scale of genealogy; distance from the common ancestor. No man is a thousand descents from Adam.

Offspring; issue; descendants. The care of our descent perplexes most.

Arank in the scale of subordination.

Lowest place.

In music, a passing from a note or sound to one more grave or less acute.