descendants
descendants — noun
1. the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so on of a particular perso
the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so on of a particular person or group — every later generation in a family line, all the way down to the present.
Ada tells her grandchildren they are the descendants of farmers from an Irish village.
descendants of [origin group] pattern
Only the direct descendants of the original founder may attend the family reunion in August.
collocation: direct descendants
Omar wrote a long letter for his descendants to read after his death.
Many Black Americans in Charleston are descendants of people brought there on slave ships.
The old farmhouse has been passed down through five generations to the present descendants.
文法句型
someone's descendants
the descendants of [person/group]
direct descendants
用法筆記
Subject is typically a person, family, or named ancestor group; the descendants are all later generations, not just direct sons and daughters. Distinguish from sense 2 (animal) by the parent: if the parent is a human or a family of humans, use this sense.
常見錯誤
2. the animals alive today that come from an animal species that lived long ago — f
the animals alive today that come from an animal species that lived long ago — for example, today's birds being the descendants of certain dinosaurs.
Most scientists agree that modern birds are the descendants of small feathered dinosaurs.
be descendants of + extinct group
House cats are believed to be the descendants of wild cats from the Middle East.
The horses on this island are descendants of animals brought by Spanish sailors centuries ago.
Researchers in Kenya track how the descendants of one elephant family roam the savanna.
Whales are the distant descendants of land mammals that returned to the sea long ago.
- ancestors
the earlier species the modern animals come from
文法句型
descendants of [species]
modern descendants
用法筆記
Common in biology, evolution writing, and nature documentaries. The 'parent' species is almost always one that lived a very long time ago, often extinct. Distinguish from sense 1 by the subject: if the descendants are animals, use this sense.
常見錯誤
3. newer things — such as machines, languages, products, or styles — that have grow
newer things — such as machines, languages, products, or styles — that have grown out of an earlier thing and still carry features of it, like a kind of family line for objects or ideas.
Today's smartphones are the descendants of the bulky mobile phones of the 1990s.
descendants of [earlier technology]
Spanish and Italian are descendants of Latin, the language of the Roman Empire.
languages as descendants of an older language
The electric scooters in Taipei are descendants of a simple wooden scooter from Europe.
Modern jazz pieces are the descendants of older blues songs from the American South.
Today's racing bicycles are the direct descendants of a wooden frame built in France in 1817.
- successors
broader; covers anything that comes after, even without a clear family-tree link
- offshoots
things that branch off from a main source; often a smaller side branch
- derivatives
neutral and technical; emphasises that something has been derived from a source
- ancestors
the older designs or styles that the modern descendants grew out of
- predecessors
the earlier versions that came before
文法句型
descendants of [earlier thing]
the modern descendants of [X]
用法筆記
Always figurative; the 'parent' is an earlier object, design, language, or art form, not a living being. Distinguish from senses 1 and 2 by what the descendants are: if they are things or ideas rather than people or animals, this sense applies.