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k; especially, hostile invasion from sea; - - often followed by upon or on; as, to make a descent upon the enemy. The United Provinces . . . ordered public prayer to God, when they feared that the French and English fleets would make a descent upon their coasts. Jortin.

Glowing; luminous; incandescent.

An act of condescension. [Obs.] Dr. H. More.

White or glowing with heat. [R.] Ure.

White, glowing, or luminous, with intense heat; as, incandescent carbon or platinum; hence, clear; shining; brilliant. Holy Scripture become resplendent; or, as one might say, incandescent throughout. I. Taylor. Incandescent lamp or light (Elec.), a kind of lamp in which the light is produced by a thin filament of cond…

ors like the rainbow; exhibiting a play of changeable colors; nacreous; prismatic; as, iridescent glass.

Undergoing the process of becoming stone; having the capacity of being converted into stone; having the quality of petrifying bodies.

Breaking out again after temporary abatement or supression; as, a recrudescent epidemic.

Slightly green; greenish.

skill, good or bad habits. No virtue is acquired in an instant, but step by step. Barrow. Descent is the title whereby a man, on the death of his ancestor, acquires his estate, by right of representation, as his heir at law. Blackstone.

To connect in the way of descent; to trace origin to. How do these facts tend to affiliate the faculty of hearing upon the aboriginal vegetative processes H. Spencer.

Connection in the way of descent. H. Spencer.

sed in ship building. African violet African-American, a United States citizen of African descent.

Pertaining to descent by the male line of ancestors. "The agnatic succession." Blackstone.

Condition as to ancestors; ancestral lineage; hence, birth or honorable descent. Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. Addison.

One of the race or people who claim descent from the Saxons, Angles, or other Teutonic tribes who settled in England; a person of English descent in its broadest sense.

A flooring of plank before a dam to cause the water to make a gradual descent.

ty, or the purity of a metal. He was there only for the purpose of ascertaining whether a descent on England was practicable. Macaulay.

A sudden, great, or irresistible descent or influx of anything.

The descent of a deity to earth, and his incarnation as a man or an animal; -- chiefly associated with the incarnations of Vishnu.