Other forms: scions
A scion is a descendant of a notable family, or a shoot for grafting. A scion of the house, the scion of a banking family, graft the scion.
The gardening sense is the older: a scion is the cutting joined onto a rootstock, and almost every fruit tree in existence is made this way. The family sense borrows the image of a shoot from an established stock.
1nounscionA descendant of a notable family, or a shoot for grafting.
“As the scion of a wealthy banking family, he never had to worry about money.”
scion is a shoot.
The old word is a shoot cut off one tree to be grown on another. A scion is the young one of a great house, carrying it on.
hooks ontotree
Old French cion means a shoot or twig, from a Germanic root meaning to sprout.
Proto-Indo-European
*geye- — to split open, sprout
Proto-Germanic
*kīþô
Frankish
*kīþō
Old French
cion
Middle English
sion
English, today
scion
Built from
From Middle English sion, sioun, syon, scion, cion, from Old French cion, ciun, cyon, sion, from Frankish kīþō, kīþ, from Proto-Germanic kīþô, kīþą, kīþaz (“sprout”), from Proto-Indo-European geye- (“to split open, sprout”), same source as Old English ċīþ (“a young shoot; sprout; germ; sprig”), Old Saxon kīth (“sprout; germ”), Old High German kīdi (“offshoot; sprout; germ”). See also French scion and pcd chion. a doublet of chit.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA