Other forms: descendants
A descendant is a person who comes after you in your family line. Her descendants, a direct descendant, descendants of the settlers.
It runs downward — children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren — where an ancestor runs upward. Direct descendant means through an unbroken line of parent and child, and claims to be one are a staple of family history and often wrong. It also covers later versions of things: a descendant of the original design. Note the spelling: descendant is the noun and descendent the adjective, though the two blur.
1noundescendantA person who comes after you in your family line.
“She is a descendant of Irish farmers who emigrated to Boston.”
2nounlaterA later version of something.
“Today's smartphone is a distant descendant of the first bulky mobile phones.”
descendant is a person or thing coming after.
Latin descendens comes from descendere, to climb down — de plus scandere, to climb. Ascend, scan and scandal come from the same climbing.
Latin
dēscendēns
Middle English
dessendaunte
English, today
descendant
Built from
From Middle English dessendaunte, borrowed from Middle French -, from Latin dēscendēns, present participle of descendo, from dē + scando (“to climb, ascend”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA