Dessendaunte

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who has come down from a particular ancestor, such as an offspring or a later generation of a family line
2. An heir or child in a bloodline who inherits from a forebear, tracing their origins back through earlier generations
3. Someone whose lineage stems from a given progenitor, an offspring carrying forward the family of an earlier parent

Etymology: Middle English "dessendaunte" is a Middle English spelling of "descendant," which was borrowed from Old French "descendant," the present participle of "descendre," meaning "to descend." The word is built from Latin "descendere," literally "to climb down," from "de-" ("down") and "scandere" ("to climb"). The same "scandere" root gives English "ascend" and "scan," which originally meant to count metrical feet by climbing through a line's rhythm. Its early sense was broader than the modern one. A descendant was simply something or someone that came down from an earlier source, and the idea of a line of inheritance grew naturally from the image of a family tree descending from a root. The spelling shows the Middle English scribe's attempt to fit the French form into English habits, with the double "s" and the "-aunte" ending reflecting French pronunciation.