line of descent

Questions about line of descent

What does line of descent mean?

line of descent means "the kinship relation between an individual and the individual's progenitors". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for line of descent?

Close synonyms include descent, lineage, filiation, lineage, line. 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 line of descent a common word?

line of descent 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.