Word: ascensional Part of Speech: adj Etymology: From ascension + -al. 1. Relating to upward movement; pertaining to the act of rising or ascending. Labels: not-comparable Example: 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. Example: 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. 2. Pertaining to an increase in status or power. Labels: not-comparable Example: 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). Example: 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. 3. Pertaining to an increase in clarity and understanding. Labels: not-comparable Example: The Neoplatonic scholars had concluded that man's path goes through several stages of knowledge in an ascensional direction. Example: 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. 4. Pertaining to progress or improvement. Labels: not-comparable Example: To begin with, both models see social change as evolutionary and as an 'ascensional spiral towards progress.' Example: 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. 5. Pertaining to the achievement of a higher spiritual state. Labels: not-comparable Example: 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. Example: 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. 6. Pertaining to right ascension and/or oblique ascension. Labels: not-comparable Example: 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. Example: 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.