Other forms: descended, descending, descends
To descend is to go down. The plane descends towards the runway, the path descends into the valley, you descend a staircase with a box in both arms.
In speech people say go down and keep descend for writing, so the word carries weight even in a plain sentence. It runs in several directions at once. Be descended from means to have someone in your family line - she is descended from a Cornish miner - and the noun is descent, the person a descendant. Descend on a place means to arrive in numbers, unwanted: the tourists descend on the town every July. Descend into marks a slide into something worse, as when a meeting descends into shouting, and descend to is what you do when you stoop to behaviour beneath you.
1verbdescendTo move down from a higher place.~24%
“The lift descended slowly to the basement.”
formal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
synonyms: go down, drop
2verbslopeTo slope downwards.~2%
“The lane descends steeply for half a mile before it reaches the beach.”
formal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
3verbearlierTo have someone from an earlier generation as an ancestor.~70%
“He claims to be descended from a Norwegian shipbuilder.”
4verbarriveTo arrive somewhere in large numbers, usually unwelcome.~2%
“Thousands of fans descended on the small station after the match.”
5verbsinkTo sink into a worse state.~2%
“The debate descended into shouting within ten minutes.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: go down
Descend came through Middle English descenden and Old French descendre from Latin descendere, which is de-, down, welded to scando, to climb. To descend is literally to climb downwards. The same scando sits inside ascend and scale, and the root behind it, Proto-Indo-European *skend-, meant to climb, to dart, to jump.
Proto-Indo-European
*skend- — to climb, scale; to dart; to jump
Latin
dēscendere
Old French
descendere
Anglo-Norman
descendere
Middle English
descenden — to move downwards, fall, descend; to slope downwards; to go from a better to a worse condition, decline, degenerate; to be a descendant, derive from (a source); etc.
English, today
descend
Built from
The verb is derived from Middle English descenden (“to move downwards, fall, descend; to slope downwards; to go from a better to a worse condition, decline, degenerate; to be a descendant, derive from (a source); etc.”), from Anglo-Norman descendere, descendre, and Old French descendere, descendre (“to move downwards, fall, descend; to slope downwards; to be a descendant, derive from (a source); etc.”) (modern French descendre), and from their etymon Latin dēscendere, the present active infinitive of dēscendō (“to come or go down, fall, descend; to slope downwards; to be a descendant; etc.”), from de- + scandō (“to ascend, climb; to clamber”) (from Proto-Indo-European skend- (“to climb, scale; to dart; to jump”)). The noun is derived from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA