Noun

(ascendancies)

The process or period of one's ascent

Supremacy; superiority; dominant control; the quality of being in the ascendant

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=January 15 , author=Phil McNulty , title=Tottenham 0 - 0 Man Utd , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=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.}}

A class of Protestant landowners and professionals that dominated political and social life in Ireland up to the early 20th century

* [W. B. Yeats] belonged not to the ascendancy class but to the protestant bourgeoisie.'' – Terry Eagleton, ''New Left Review , 1975

Noun

(label) The power to enforce rules or give orders.

* 1883 , (Howard Pyle), (The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood)

But in the meantime Robin Hood and his band lived quietly in Sherwood Forest, without showing their faces abroad, for Robin knew that it would not be wise for him to be seen in the neighborhood of Nottingham, those in authority being very wroth with him.

(label) Persons in command; specifically, government.

*{{quote-book, year=1927, author= F. E. Penny

, chapter=4, title= Pulling the Strings , passage=The case was that of a murder. It had an element of mystery about it, however, which was puzzling the authorities . A turban and loincloth soaked in blood had been found; also a staff.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Legal highs: A new prescription , passage=No sooner has a [synthetic] drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. These “legal highs” are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again.}}

(label) A person accepted as a source of reliable information on a subject.

* 1930 September 18, Albert Einstein, as quoted in Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (1988) by Banesh Hoffman

To punish me for my contempt of authority', Fate has made me an ' authority myself.