Descent

Not to be confused with Dissent.

Descent may refer to:

As a noun

Genealogy and inheritance

• Common descent, concept in evolutionary biology
• Kinship, one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology
  • Pedigree chart or family tree
  • Ancestry
  • Lineal descendant
  • Heritage
  • Royal descent - lineal descent from a monarch
• Phylogenetics
  • Tree diagram (disambiguation)
• Inheritance (law and property)

Mathematics

• Infinite descent, a method going back to Fermat to solve Diophantine equations
• Descent (mathematics), an idea extending the notion of "gluing" in topology
• Hadamard's method of descent, a technique for solving partial differential equations
• Gradient descent, a first-order optimization algorithm going back to Newton
• Descents in permutations, a classical permutation statistic in combinatorics

Other uses

• Descent (aeronautics), the decrease of an aircraft in altitude during flight
• Descent (font), the distance that a typeface descends below the baseline in typography
• Katabasis

As a proper name

Film

• The Descent, a 2005 horror film
  • The Descent Part 2, the 2009 sequel to the 2005 film
• Descent (2005 film), a television film on the Sci-Fi Channel
• Descent (2007 film), a thriller starring Rosario Dawson

Gaming

• Descent (1995 video game), first in a series from Interplay Entertainment and Parallax Software
  • Descent II, sequel to Descent
  • Descent 3, sequel to Descent II
  • Descent (unreleased video game), an unreleased prequel to Descent
• Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War, a 1998 space combat simulation computer game
• Descent: Journeys in the Dark, a 2005 board game by Fantasy Flight Games
• Dragon Age: Inquisition – The Descent, a 2015 downloadable content pack for Dragon Age: Inquisition

Literature

• Descent: An Irresistible Tragicomedy of Everyday Life, a 2004 novel by Sabrina Broadbent
• The Descent (novel), by Jeff Long
• Descent (magazine), a magazine about caving
• Descent (journal), a genealogy journal published by the Society of Australian Genealogists

Music

• Descent, an album by the band This Burning Effigy
• "Descent" (song), a song by Fear Factory from Obsolete

Television

• "Descent" (Star Trek: The Next Generation), a two-part 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation
• "Descent" (The Outer Limits), a 1999 episode of The Outer Limits
• "Descent" (Stargate SG-1), a 2002 episode of Stargate SG-1
• "The Descent" (The Vampire Diaries), a 2011 episode of The Vampire Diaries
• "Descent", a 2013 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles

See also

• Dissent (homophone)