ascendent

1. 1.

   tending or directed upward

   “rooted and ascendant strength like that of foliage”

   Synonymsascendantascensive

   Similarascending
2. 2.

   most powerful or important or influential

   “the economically ascendant class”

   “D-day is considered the dominating event of the war in Europe”

   Synonymsascendantdominating

   Similardominant

Other forms of ascendent

plural

ascendents·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about ascendent

What does ascendent mean?

ascendent means "position or state of being dominant or in control". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in ascendent?

ascendent has 3 syllables: a-scen-dent. The stress falls on "a".

What is another word for ascendent?

Close synonyms include ascendant, ancestor, ascendant, antecedent, root. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ascendent a common word?

ascendent is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.