Word.ws English Dictionary

ascendancy

/əˈsɛndənsi/

ascendancy noun: the quality of being in the ascendant; dominant control, supremacy. Also the ellipsis of Protestant Ascendancy.

Noun

ascendancy (countable and uncountable, plural ascendancies)

  1. The quality of being in the ascendant; dominant control, supremacy.
    • Spurs ended the half in the ascendancy and Van der Vaart was again inches away from giving them the lead when he met Bale's cross but his header flew wide.2011 January 15, Phil McNulty, “Tottenham 0 - 0 Man Utd”, in BBC
    • The Tory hard right is in the ascendancy, and a fascist street movement – led by convicted fraudster Tommy Robinson – represents a growing threat.2018 July 18, Owen Jones, “The hard right can only be defeated from the left, not from the centre”, in The Guardian
  2. A quantitative attribute of an ecosystem, defined as a function of the ecosystem's trophic network, and intended to indicate its ability to prevail against disturbance by virtue of its combined organization and size.
    • Ascendency was found to be a useful indicator for the health assessment of marine benthic ecosystems over space and time.2009, Sven Erik Jørgensen, editor, Ecosystem Ecology, Academic Press, →ISBN, page 63

Also used as

ascendancy is also the ellipsis of Protestant Ascendancy.

ascendancy meaning in Arabic

ascendancy in Arabic

supremacy; superiority; dominant control
سَطْوَة saṭwa, تَفَوُّق tafawwuq

Examples of ascendancy in a sentence

  • Writing in particular has been re-mediated in contemporary culture in ways that largely entangle words in images, with images gaining ascendancy.
  • The ascendancy of the offensive over the defensive stems particularly from the ability of advanced weapon systems to penetrate enemy defenses.
  • The victim is always addressed as the "datu" or rich man of their Barangay and enjoyed an economic ascendancy over Marcelino, a mere barangay tanod.

All 12 example sentences with ascendancy

Synonyms of ascendancy

Forms of ascendancy

pluralascendancies
alternative formascendency

Origin of ascendancy

From ascend + -ancy or ascendant + -cy. The use in ecology is due to Robert Ulanowicz.

Words formed from ascendancy

Questions about ascendancy

What does ascendancy mean?
Ascendancy means the quality of being in the ascendant; dominant control, supremacy.
What is ascendancy in Arabic?
Ascendancy in Arabic is سَطْوَة (saṭwa), تَفَوُّق (tafawwuq). See Ascendancy meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is ascendancy?
Ascendancy is a noun.
How do you pronounce ascendancy?
Ascendancy is pronounced /əˈsɛndənsi/.
What is the plural of ascendancy?
The plural of ascendancy is ascendancies.

Words near ascendancy in the dictionary

  1. ascend
  2. ascendable
  3. ascendance
  4. ascendances
  5. ascendancies
  6. ascendancy
  7. ascendant
  8. ascendantly
  9. ascendants
  10. ascended
  11. ascendence

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ascendancy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-ascendancy.wav.

Cite this entry: “ascendancy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ascendancy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.