ascensional
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Etymology: From ascension + -al.
Senses: examples: text: The ascensional power of this balloon was very great, and being set loose in Paris, it rose with great rapidity, and at the end of four minutes had reached a height of nearly a thousand yards, when it was lost sight of by entering a cloud.
ref: 1875, Adolphe Ganot, William Guy Peck, Introductory Course of Natural Philosophy, page 151:
text: They were all anxious to give the credit of any new thing to the right person, and he though that Mr. Pink deserved whatever credit might be due to ascensional casting. But the difficulties were very great. Unless the cast was very hot indeed, the steel would refuse to ascend, and a great many wasters were caused thereby.
ref: 1895, Richard Smith-Casson, “Small Cast Steel Ingots”, in Transactions of the Iron and Steel Institute, volume 46, page 215:
text: In the latter case, however, it may be considered that the mountain-range produces an effect in bringing the air-masses to the point of saturation, and thus preparing them for the action of the convectional ascensional movement.
ref: 1909 April, “Correspondence and Notes”, in Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, volume 35, page 142:
text: A given quantity of air can be circulated round a mine for the least expenditure of power with ascensional ventilation.
ref: 1913, Mining Engineering, page 68:
glosses: Relating to upward movement; pertaining to the act of rising or ascending.
examples: text: Two aspects will be examined here: i – Period of change from colono (or employee) status, that is, the length of time this initial status is retained; ii – Period of ascensional change from colono (or employee) status, that is the length of time required to become independent, or, in other words, to rise to the status of self-employed farmer (renter or owner-farmer) or self-employed non-farmer (worker on own account or employer).
ref: 1969, Burajiru Nikkeijin Jittai Chōsa Iinkai, The Japanese Immigrant in Brazil, page 247:
text: Yet in the young man's imagination "His Highness the vulture" has clearly regained imperial and ascensional status, radically undoing its original association with death and destruction.
ref: 1993, Bernard Aresu, Counterhegemonic Discourse from the Maghreb, page 1993:
text: Bachelard has given a clear analysis of the "Atlas complex", a polemical complex and schema of verticalising effort or elevation, accompanied by a feeling of monarchical contemplation which diminishes the world so as better to glorify the gigantic, and the ambition inherent in ascensional reveries.
ref: 1999, Gilbert Durand, The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary, page 154:
glosses: Pertaining to an increase in status or power.
examples: text: The Neoplatonic scholars had concluded that man's path goes through several stages of knowledge in an ascensional direction.
ref: 1983, A. Julian Valbuena, “Verbal Strategies, Images, and Symbolic Roles in the Use of a Conventional Language by a Spanish Golden Age Playwright”, in Robert J. Di Pietro, William Frawley, Alfred Wedel, editors, The First Delaware Symposium on Language Studies: Selected Papers, page 62:
text: In an ascensional reading, the movement from sensations and perceptions to common beliefs about the physical world, to physics, to mathematics, then to logic and, finally, to theology is a movement from confusion to greater precision and clarity.
ref: 1986, 1986, Essays on Descartes' Meditations, page 11:
text: Most important, however is the ascensional direction given to this entire systematization of knowledge, which always puts the inferior disciplines at the service of the higher goals of knowledge, thus confirming the view, typical of Hugh, of the secular sciences as preparation for the understanding of divine truth.
ref: 1996, Angelo Di Berardino, Giulio D'Onofrio, Basil Studer, History of Theology - Volume 2, page 184:
glosses: Pertaining to an increase in clarity and understanding.
examples: text: To begin with, both models see social change as evolutionary and as an 'ascensional spiral towards progress.'
ref: 2006, Lisa Hill, The Passionate Society: The Social, Political and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson, page 133:
text: Schelling set himself the fundamental task of establishing a channel of ascensional intelligibility from the origins of creation to man, and even beyond man, in which the doctrines of survival and palingenesis, so dear to the Gnostics, found all their significance. Thus, the evolution of nature was marked by ever-increasing value, and creation would never by completed.
ref: 2012, Michel Meulders, Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience, page 28:
text: Nietzche believed that a healthy society is one in which there prevails an aspirational force that pulls us towards something higher and better. […] When this ascensional force loses its force, it is no longer venerated, causing it to lose its momentum further, to stagnate and then becomes descensional.
ref: 2017, Patrick West, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche for Our Times:
glosses: Pertaining to progress or improvement.
examples: text: As for magic beliefs, whether the progress of knowledge restrains the possibility of their growth, whether they belong to outdated periods of the ascensional march of humanity toward more enlightenment, they are obliged to wrap themselves in mystery in order to draw souls through fear and spread only among few followers.
ref: 1983, Jean Price-Mars, Magdaline W. Shannon, So Spoke the Uncle, page 43:
text: We may place in the second rank those who have reached the middle of the ascensional ladder, those who have achieved the degree of purification in which aspiration after perfection has become the ruling desire.
ref: 2006, Allan Kardec, The Spirits' Book, page 93:
text: Spiritual achievement was conceived in ascensional terms, rather than, for example, in term ^([sic]) of enlightenment or incarnation.”
ref: 2014, Frank E. Reynolds, Donald Capps, The Biographical Process, page 66:
glosses: Pertaining to the achievement of a higher spiritual state.
examples: text: The ascensional difference is the difference in degrees between the right ascension and either the oblique ascension, or oblique descension; and with respect to the sun, the ascensional difference is the time that he rises before six o'clock in summer, or sets before six in winter.
ref: 1820, John Bradley, A Concise Introduction to Astronomy, the Use of the Globes and Chronology, Etc., page 93:
text: Calculating by spherical trigonometry, and assuming the same obliquity, I obtain 3 dundas and 40 pulas for the ascensional arc, giving a difference in time of 3 pulas, or about one of our minutes; an error so small, that even were the Indian astronomer aware of its existence he would disregard it, satisfied that the practical purposes which his labours subserve, are, notwithstanding, carried out with sufficient accuracy.
ref: 1839 October, J.J. Middleton, “Description of an Astronomical Instrument presented by Raja Ram Sing, of Khota, to the Government of India”, in Journal of the Asiatic Society, volume 8, number 94, page 837:
text: The former is the ascensional equivalent of the first sign; subtracting it from the latter gives that of the second sign, which is 1795', and subtracting 3465' from a quadrant, 5400', gives the equivalent of the third sign which is 1935'—all as stated in the text.
ref: 1860, Ebenezer Burgess, Translation of the Sûrya-Siddhânta: A Text-Book of Hindu Astronomy, page 120:
text: The ascensional difference, γ, of a point R is the difference between its right ascension and its oblique ascension (EG = VG – VE, in Figure 4), and can be computed by means of the modern formula sin γ = tan δ· tan φ, where δ is the declination of point R.
ref: 2012, José Chabás, Bernard R. Goldstein, A Survey of European Astronomical Tables in the Late Middle Ages, page 30:
topics: astronomy
natural-sciences
glosses: Pertaining to right ascension and/or oblique ascension.