An instance of descending; act of coming down. / A way down. / A sloping passage or incline. / Lineage or hereditary derivation. / A drop to a lower status or condition; decline.

plural of descent

Descent traced from all biological descendants, regardless of sex and side of the family. / Descent traced from an ancestor, regardless of sex and side of the family of the intervening generations.

plural of descent vehicle

A means of transportation able to carry people or cargo from outer space to the surface of a planet or a moon.

(genetics) Of corresponding segments of a chromosome in different individuals, identical because they were inherited from a common ancestor without crossover.

(mathematics) A first-order iterative optimization algorithm for finding a local minimum of a differentiable function.

(anthropology) A group of people all descended from a common ancestor, whether real or fictitious, whether traceable through linear genealogies or untraceable; a clan or lineage.

(mathematics) A method of proof by contradiction that is used to prove that a statement must be false for all positive integers. By showing that if it is true for one integer, it must be true for a smaller integer, an infinite number of solutions are found and a contradiction is eventually reached.

(computing theory) A kind of top-down parsing involving a set of mutually recursive procedures, each of which implements one of the non-terminals of the grammar, so that the structure of the parser program closely mirrors that of the grammar.