Meaning & use

descendant

noun·Academic

A person who is related to someone who lived in an earlier generation.

See it in a sentence

She is a direct descendant of one of the ship's original passengers.

The museum traced the artifacts back to descendants of the region's earliest settlers.

A note on using this word

Contrasts with "ancestor," which refers to someone earlier in the family line, not later.

Words with a similar meaning

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Words with an opposite meaning

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