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A single step or stage in the succession of natural descent; a rank or remove in genealogy. Hence: The body of those who are of the same genealogical rank or remove from an ancestor; the mass of beings living at one period; also, the average lifetime of man, or the ordinary period of time at which one rank follows anot…

or subdivision of a tribe, among American aborigines. It includes those who have a common descent, and bear the same totem.

To make smooth, cozy, or agreeable. [R. or Poet.] To gentle life's descent, We shut our eyes, and think it is a plain. Young.

An incandescent lamp. See Incandescent, a.

The rate of ascent or descent; gradient; deviation from a level surface to an inclined plane; -- usually stated as so many feet per mile, or as one foot rise or fall in so many of horizontal distance; as, a heavy grade; a grade of twenty feet per mile, or of 1 in 264.

The rate of regular or graded ascent or descent in a road; grade.

Proceeding by steps or degrees; advancing, step by step, as in ascent or descent or from one state to another; regularly progressive; slow; as, a gradual increase of knowledge; a gradual decline. Creatures animate with gradual life Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man. Milton.

Standing in the second or some more remote degree of parentage or descent; -- generalIy used in composition; as, grandfather, grandson, grandchild, etc. What cause Mov'd our grand parents, in that happy state, Favor'd of Heaven so highly, to fall off From their Creator. Milton. Grand action, a pianoforte action, used i…

A son's or daughter's child; a child in the second degree of descent.

In droplike form. [Obs.] In its [hail's] guttulous descent from the air. Sir T. Browne.

An inhabitant or resident; -- a name applied to and denoting farmers of French descent or origin in Canada, especially in the Province of Quebec; -- usually in plural. The habitants or cultivators of the soil. Parkman.

The descent of a hill. [Obs.]

Having a resemblance in structure, due to descent from a common progenitor with subsequent modification; homogenetic; -- applied both to animals and plants. See Homoplastic.

The correspondence of common descent; -- a term used to supersede homology by Lankester, who also used homoplasy to denote any superinduced correspondence of position and structure in parts embryonically distinct (other writers using the term homoplasmy). Thus, there is homogeny between the fore limb of a mammal and th…

plants or animals, in external shape, in general habit, or in organs, which is not due to descent from a common ancestor, but to similar surrounding circumstances.

rth or family; not noble; not illustrious; plebeian; common; humble. I was not ignoble of descent. Shak. Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants. Shak.

A gliding in; an immisson or entrance of one thing into another; also, a sudden descent or attack. Akenside. They sit silent . . . waiting for an illapse of the spirit. Jeffrey.

th privilege or possession; -- used to denote a holding, possession, or seisin; as, in by descent; in by purchase; in of the seisin of her husband. Burrill. In and in breeding. See under Breeding. -- In and out (Naut.), through and through; -- said of a through bolt in a ship's side. Knight. -- To be in, to be at hom…

To take by descent from an ancestor; to take by inheritance; to take as heir on the death of an ancestor or other person to whose estate one succeeds; to receive as a right or title descendible by law from an ancestor at his decease; as, the heir inherits the land or real estate of his father; the eldest son of a noble…

Capable of taking by inheritance, or of receiving by descent; capable of succeeding to, as an heir. By attainder . . . the blood of the person attainted is so corrupted as to be rendered no longer inheritable. Blackstone. The eldest daughter of the king is also alone inheritable to the crown on failure of issue male. B…