ascend
verb
Simple meaning
To move upward, to fly, to soar.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhsehndSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
əˈsɛnd
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
intransitive
To move upward, to fly, to soar.
intransitive
To slope in an upward direction.
“The path ascended to the top of the hill.”
intransitivefigurative
To rise; to become higher, more noble, etc.
To trace, search or go backwards temporally (e.g., through records, genealogies, routes, etc.).
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To move upward, to fly, to soar.
Used this way, ascend is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use ascend
- “The path ascended to the top of the hill.”verb
- “She ascended to the throne after the King's death.”verb
- “She ascended from a life of poverty to one of great renown.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Moving or going or growing upward.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The ascending part of the aorta as it emerges from the left ventricle.
The branch of the ileocolic artery that supplies the ascending colon.
The part of the large intestine that ascends from the cecum to the transverse colon.
The point at which an orbit crosses the ecliptic plane going north.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
The branch of the ileocolic artery that supplies the ascending colon.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.