ascendancy

English

Alternative forms

• ascendency

Etymology

From ascend +‎ -ancy or ascendant +‎ -cy. The use in ecology is due to Robert Ulanowicz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /əˈsɛndənsi/

• Audio (Southern England):

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Noun

ascendancy (countable and uncountable, plural ascendancies)

1. The quality of being in the ascendant; dominant control, supremacy.

   Synonyms: ascendant, superiority

   • 2011 January 15, Phil McNulty, “Tottenham 0 - 0 Man Utd”, in BBC‎^[1]:

     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.

   • 2018 July 18, Owen Jones, “The hard right can only be defeated from the left, not from the centre”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     The Tory hard right is in the ascendancy, and a fascist street movement – led by convicted fraudster Tommy Robinson – represents a growing threat.

2. (historical, Ireland, sometimes capitalized) Ellipsis of Protestant Ascendancy, a class of Protestant landowners and professionals that dominated political and social life in Ireland up to the early 20th century.
   • 1975, Terry Eagleton, New Left Review:

     [W. B. Yeats] belonged not to the ascendancy class but to the protestant bourgeoisie.

   • 2017, John Gibney, “The Age of O'Connell”, in A Short History of Ireland, 1500–2000, New Haven: Yale University Press, →ISBN:

     True, the “ascendancy” remained a crucial and significant governing class in Irish life, and would remain so for generations.

3. (ecology) A quantitative attribute of an ecosystem, defined as a function of the ecosystem's trophic network, and intended to indicate its ability to prevail against disturbance by virtue of its combined organization and size. [from 1986]
   • 2009, Sven Erik Jørgensen, editor, Ecosystem Ecology, Academic Press, →ISBN, page 63:

     Ascendency was found to be a useful indicator for the health assessment of marine benthic ecosystems over space and time.

Derived terms

• ascendance

Related terms

• ascendant

Translations

supremacy; superiority; dominant control

• Azerbaijani: nüfuz (az), zabitə (az)
• Bulgarian: господство (bg) (gospodstvo), надмощие (bg) (nadmoštie), власт (bg) (vlast), влияние (bg) (vlijanie)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 優勢／优势 (jau¹ sai³), 支配地位 (zi¹ pui³ dei⁶ wai⁶)

  Mandarin: 優勢／优势 (zh) (yōushì)

• Czech: nadvláda (cs) f, převaha f
• Dutch: overwicht (nl), overhand (nl)
• Estonian: ülevõim
• Finnish: valta-asema (fi), valta-asemassa oleva
• French: ascendant (fr) m
• German: Vormacht (de) f, Vormachtstellung (de) f, Einfluss (de) m, Vorherrschaft (de) f, Überlegenheit (de) f
• Hungarian: hatalom (hu), tekintély (hu), uralom (hu)
• Icelandic: ofurvald n
• Irish: cinseal m
• Italian: influsso (it) m
• Japanese: 優位 (ja) (ゆうい, yūi), 優勢 (ja) (ゆうせい, yūsei)
• Korean: please add this translation if you can
• Portuguese: ascendência (pt) f
• Romanian: superioritate (ro) f, supremație (ro) f, ascendență (ro) f
• Russian: госпо́дство (ru) n (gospódstvo), власть (ru) f (vlastʹ), превосхо́дство (ru) n (prevosxódstvo)
• Spanish: ascendiente (es) m, predominio (es) m, influencia (es) f, ascendencia (es) f

Further reading

• Protestant Ascendancy on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• ascendency (ecology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• candy canes