ascensional

Adjective

ascensional (not comparable)

1. Relating to upward movement; pertaining to the act of rising or ascending.
   • The ascensional power of this balloon was very great, and being set loose in Paris, it rose with great rapidity, and at the end of four minutes had reached a height of nearly a thousand yards, when it was lost sight of by entering a cloud.1875, Adolphe Ganot, William Guy Peck, Introductory Course of Natural Philosophy, page 151
   • They were all anxious to give the credit of any new thing to the right person, and he though that Mr. Pink deserved whatever credit might be due to ascensional casting. But the difficulties were very great. Unless the cast was very hot indeed, the steel would refuse to ascend, and a great many...1895, Richard Smith-Casson, “Small Cast Steel Ingots”, in Transactions of the Iron and Steel Institute, volume 46, page 215
2. Pertaining to an increase in status or power.
   • Two aspects will be examined here: i – Period of change from colono (or employee) status, that is, the length of time this initial status is retained; ii – Period of ascensional change from colono (or employee) status, that is the length of time required to become independent, or, in other words...1969, Burajiru Nikkeijin Jittai Chōsa Iinkai, The Japanese Immigrant in Brazil, page 247
   • Yet in the young man's imagination "His Highness the vulture" has clearly regained imperial and ascensional status, radically undoing its original association with death and destruction.1993, Bernard Aresu, Counterhegemonic Discourse from the Maghreb, page 1993
3. Pertaining to an increase in clarity and understanding.
   • The Neoplatonic scholars had concluded that man's path goes through several stages of knowledge in an ascensional direction.1983, A. Julian Valbuena, “Verbal Strategies, Images, and Symbolic Roles in the Use of a Conventional Language by a Spanish Golden Age Playwright”, in Robert J. Di Pietro, William Frawley, Alfred...
   • In an ascensional reading, the movement from sensations and perceptions to common beliefs about the physical world, to physics, to mathematics, then to logic and, finally, to theology is a movement from confusion to greater precision and clarity.1986, 1986, Essays on Descartes' Meditations, page 11
4. Pertaining to progress or improvement.
   • To begin with, both models see social change as evolutionary and as an 'ascensional spiral towards progress.'2006, Lisa Hill, The Passionate Society: The Social, Political and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson, page 133
   • Schelling set himself the fundamental task of establishing a channel of ascensional intelligibility from the origins of creation to man, and even beyond man, in which the doctrines of survival and palingenesis, so dear to the Gnostics, found all their significance. Thus, the evolution of nature was...2012, Michel Meulders, Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience, page 28
5. Pertaining to the achievement of a higher spiritual state.
   • As for magic beliefs, whether the progress of knowledge restrains the possibility of their growth, whether they belong to outdated periods of the ascensional march of humanity toward more enlightenment, they are obliged to wrap themselves in mystery in order to draw souls through fear and spread...1983, Jean Price-Mars, Magdaline W. Shannon, So Spoke the Uncle, page 43
   • We may place in the second rank those who have reached the middle of the ascensional ladder, those who have achieved the degree of purification in which aspiration after perfection has become the ruling desire.2006, Allan Kardec, The Spirits' Book, page 93
6. Pertaining to right ascension and/or oblique ascension.
   • The ascensional difference is the difference in degrees between the right ascension and either the oblique ascension, or oblique descension; and with respect to the sun, the ascensional difference is the time that he rises before six o'clock in summer, or sets before six in winter.1820, John Bradley, A Concise Introduction to Astronomy, the Use of the Globes and Chronology, Etc., page 93
   • Calculating by spherical trigonometry, and assuming the same obliquity, I obtain 3 dundas and 40 pulas for the ascensional arc, giving a difference in time of 3 pulas, or about one of our minutes; an error so small, that even were the Indian astronomer aware of its existence he would disregard it...1839 October, J.J. Middleton, “Description of an Astronomical Instrument presented by Raja Ram Sing, of Khota, to the Government of India”, in Journal of the Asiatic Society, volume 8, number 94...