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Decent vs Descend - What's the difference?

decent | descend |

As an adjective decent

is decent (sufficiently clothed).

As a verb descend is

to pass from a higher to a lower place; to move downwards; to come or go down in any way, as by falling, flowing, walking, etc; to plunge; to fall; to incline downward.

decent

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • (obsolete) Appropriate; suitable for the circumstances.
  • (of a person) Having a suitable conformity to basic moral standards; showing integrity, fairness, or other characteristics associated with moral uprightness.
  • Sufficiently clothed or dressed to be seen.
  • Fair; good enough; okay.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
  • , title=(The China Governess) , chapter=Foreword citation , passage=A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe.}}
  • Significant; substantial.
  • (obsolete) Comely; shapely; well-formed.
  • * A sable stole of cyprus lawn / Over thy decent shoulders drawn — Milton.
  • Antonyms

    * indecent

    Anagrams

    *

    descend

    English

    (Webster 1913)

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To pass from a higher to a lower place; to move downwards; to come or go down in any way, as by falling, flowing, walking, etc.; to plunge; to fall; to incline downward
  • The rain descended , and the floods came. Matthew vii. 25.
    We will here descend to matters of later date. Fuller.
  • (poetic) To enter mentally; to retire.
  • [He] with holiest meditations fed, Into himself descended . .
  • (with on or upon) To make an attack, or incursion, as if from a vantage ground; to come suddenly and with violence.
  • And on the suitors let thy wrath descend . .
  • To come down to a lower, less fortunate, humbler, less virtuous, or worse, state or station; to lower or abase one's self
  • he descended from his high estate
  • To pass from the more general or important to the particular or less important matters to be considered.
  • To come down, as from a source, original, or stock; to be derived; to proceed by generation or by transmission; to fall or pass by inheritance.
  • the beggar may descend from a prince
    a crown descends to the heir
  • (anatomy) To move toward the south, or to the southward.
  • (music) To fall in pitch; to pass from a higher to a lower tone.
  • To go down upon or along; to pass from a higher to a lower part of
  • they descended the river in boats; to descend a ladder
    But never tears his cheek descended . .

    Synonyms

    * go down

    Antonyms

    * ascend * go up

    Derived terms

    * descender