scion
UK/ˈsaɪən//ˈsaɪ.ən/
scion noun: a descendant, especially a first-generation descendant of a distinguished family.
Noun
scion (plural scions)
- A descendant, especially a first-generation descendant of a distinguished family.
- No senate seats in council for the dead; no scion of a time honoured dynasty pants to rule over the inhabitants of a charnel house; the general's hand is cold, and the soldier has his untimely grave dug in his native fields, unhonoured, though in youth.1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 15
- Rudolf was the bold, bad Baron of traditional melodrama. Irene was young, as pretty as a picture, fresh from a music academy in England. He was the scion of an ancient noble family; she an orphan without money or friends.1956, Delano Ames, chapter 9, in Crime out of Mind
- The heir to a throne.
- A guardian.
- A detached shoot or twig containing buds from a woody plant, used in grafting; a shoot or twig in a general sense.
- [If] you finde a certaine miſlike or conſumption in the plant, you ſhall immediatly vvith a ſharp knife cut the plant off ſlope-vviſe upvvard, about three fingers from the ground, and ſo let it reſt till the next ſpring, at vvhich time you ſhall behold nevv cyons iſſue from the roote, […]1613, G[ervase] M[arkham], “Of the Setting or Planting of the Cyons or Branches of Most Sorts of Fruit-trees”, in The English Husbandman. The First Part: […], London: […] T[homas] S[nodham] for Iohn...
- He used to think that the plums in this country weren’t good enough, and so he has reformed them, grafting scion to rootstock.2020, Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, Fourth Estate, page 681
scion meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
scion in Tamil
- ஒட்டவைக்கும் செடி, ஒட்டுகிளை, ஒட்டுமுளை, தண்டுமூலம், வாரிசு, எலுமிச்சை
scion in Urdu
- خلف, وارث
scion in Bengali
- বংশধর, কলম
scion in Malayalam
- graft, cutting, slip
- ഇളം കൂമ്പ്, ഒട്ടുചെടി, കൂമ്പ്, മുള, ചന, ചനച്ചം
- descendant, heir, successor
- സന്തതി, തനം, നമ്പ്, നാമ്പ്, ശലാക, ശിലാക
More languagesFewer languages
- scion in Kannada
- ಕಸಿ ಕೊಂಬೆ, ಹುಟ್ಟು ಹಾಕುವ ರೆಂಬೆ, ಕುಡಿ, ಸಂತತಿಯವನು
- scion in Tagalog
- inanak
- scion in Malay
- keturunan
Examples of scion in a sentence
- It was said to him that those people were the scions of Zion.1966, Sholem Aleichem, An Early Passover, paperback edition, Clifton Pub. Co., page 24:
- He could show his parents Eliot, scion of Derek Moulthorp, and then how could they say he was throwing his life away?1986, David Leavitt, The Lost Language of Cranes, paperback edition, Penguin, page 72:
- Cho is the scion of one of the wealthy families that control much of South Korea’s export-driven economy.2014 December 31, Martin Fackler, “Court Orders Arrest of Ex-Executive at Korean Airlines Over ‘Nut Rage’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
- Her father, Carter Burden Sr., was a handsome scion of the Vanderbilt dynasty.2026 January 11, Alex Kuczynski, “Her Life Was an Old-Money Dream. It Collapsed in a Moment.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
Forms of scion
| plural | scions |
|---|
Origin of scion
From Middle English sion, sioun, syon, scion, cion, from Old French cion, ciun, cyon, sion, from Frankish *kīþō, *kīþ, from Proto-Germanic *kīþô, *kīþą, *kīþaz (“sprout”), from Proto-Indo-European *geye- (“to split open, sprout”), same source as Old English ċīþ (“a young shoot; sprout; germ; sprig”), Old Saxon kīth (“sprout; germ”), Old High German kīdi (“offshoot; sprout; germ”). See also French scion and Picard chion. Doublet of chit.
Words that rhyme with scion
Questions about scion
- What does scion mean?
- Scion means a descendant, especially a first-generation descendant of a distinguished family.
- What is scion in Tamil?
- Scion in Tamil is ஒட்டவைக்கும் செடி, ஒட்டுகிளை, ஒட்டுமுளை. See Scion meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use scion in a sentence?
- It was said to him that those people were the scions of Zion.
- What part of speech is scion?
- Scion is a noun.
- How do you pronounce scion?
- Scion is pronounced /ˈsaɪən/ (UK).
- What is the plural of scion?
- The plural of scion is scions.
Words near scion in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: scion (page history and authors); scion (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scion (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scion (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); scion (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); scion (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: en-us-scion.ogg.
Cite this entry: “scion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.