descend upon
descend upon verb: to make an attack or incursion, from or as if from a vantage ground; to come suddenly and with violence.
Verb
descend upon (third-person singular simple present descends upon, present participle descending upon, simple past and past participle descended upon)
- To make an attack or incursion, from or as if from a vantage ground; to come suddenly and with violence.
- To arrive suddenly or unexpectedly, especially in a manner that causes disruption or inconvenience.
- My neighbour descended upon me just as I was walking out the door.
- To visit in large numbers, especially a public place.
- This fall, millions of devout Muslims will descend upon Mecca, Medina, and Saudi Arabia's holy sites in one of the largest annual migrations in human history.2013, Laurie Gaarrett, Maxine Builder, The Middle East Plague Goes Global
Forms of descend upon
| third-person singular present | descends upon |
|---|---|
| present participle | descending upon |
| past participle | descended upon |
| past | descended upon |
| alternative form | descend on |
Questions about descend upon
- What does descend upon mean?
- Descend upon means to make an attack or incursion, from or as if from a vantage ground; to come suddenly and with violence.
- What part of speech is descend upon?
- Descend upon is a verb.
- What is the past tense of descend upon?
- The past tense of descend upon is descended upon.
Words near descend upon in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: descend upon (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.
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Cite this entry: “descend upon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/descend_upon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.