descendant

«descendant» in Mova's school dictionary: A person who comes later in the same family line: a… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a descendant, descendants)

meaning for a pupil

1) A person who comes later in the same family line: a child, grandchild, great-grandchild and so on. tree →

2) An animal or plant that has developed from an earlier kind. tree →

3) Something that has grown out of an earlier thing. tree →

sense in the lessons

In history and family-tree lessons, descendants are the people who come after an ancestor. In science, birds are thought to be descendants of dinosaurs. In stories, «a descendant of the king» tells the reader someone has royal blood. Phrases: «a direct descendant», «descendants of», «ancestors and descendants».

examples

• She is a descendant of Irish farmers. tree →
• Birds are descendants of dinosaurs. tree →
• The old queen had dozens of descendants. tree →
• We drew a family tree with Great-Gran at the top and her descendants below. tree →
• Modern dogs are descendants of wolves. tree →
• He claims to be a descendant of a famous pirate. tree →
• Today's computers are descendants of huge early machines. tree →
• Daedalus, a descendant of Erechtheus, was an Athenian architect, sculptor, and mechanician. tree →

note

Opposite: ancestor (someone who came before). Spelling trap: the noun is usually «descendant» (with «-ant»); «descendent» is a rarer adjective. Do not confuse with «descent» (going down, or family origin). Countable.

In the corpora

• Babur, a descendant of Timur and of Genghis Khan, founded the Mughal Empire by defeating the Delhi Sultan at Panipat in 1526.
• God told Abraham to look at the stars and try to count them: his descendants would be as many.
• Birds are living descendants of dinosaurs.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «descendant» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.