ascendency

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as·cen·dan·cy

also as·cen·den·cy (ə-sĕn′dən-sē)

Superiority or decisive advantage; domination: "Germany only awaits trade revival to gain an immense mercantile ascendancy" (Winston S. Churchill).

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

ascendency - the state that exists when one person or group has power over another; "her apparent dominance of her husband was really her attempt to make him pay attention to her"

ascendance, ascendancy, ascendence, dominance, control

condition, status - a state at a particular time; "a condition (or state) of disrepair"; "the current status of the arms negotiations"

ascendant, ascendent - position or state of being dominant or in control; "that idea was in the ascendant"

supremacy, domination, mastery - power to dominate or defeat; "mastery of the seas"

predominance, predomination, prepotency - the state of being predominant over others

dominion, rule - dominance or power through legal authority; "France held undisputed dominion over vast areas of Africa"; "the rule of Caesar"

regulation - the state of being controlled or governed

absolutism, despotism, tyranny - dominance through threat of punishment and violence

monopoly - exclusive control or possession of something; "They have no monopoly on intelligence"

Translations

ascensione

References in classic literature ?

He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation.

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Customs have been handed down by ages of repetition, but the punishment for ignoring a custom is a matter for individual treatment by a jury of the culprit's peers, and I may say that justice seldom misses fire, but seems rather to rule in inverse ratio to the ascendency of law.

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Astor had been obliged to have recourse to British subjects experienced in the Canadian fur trade; henceforth it was his intention, as much as possible, to select Americans, so as to secure an ascendency of American influence in the management of the company, and to make it decidedly national.

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Many moons ago, when he had been much smaller, he had desired the skin of Sabor, the lioness, or Numa, the lion, or Sheeta, the leopard to cover his hairless body that he might no longer resemble hideous Histah, the snake; but now he was proud of his sleek skin for it betokened his descent from a mighty race, and the conflicting desires to go naked in prideful proof of his ancestry, or to conform to the customs of his own kind and wear hideous and uncomfortable apparel found first one and then the other in the ascendency.