ascendency, ascendancy

[In Fr. ascendance; Sp. ascendencia = ancestry; Port. ascendencia; Ital. ascendenza; from Lat. ascendens = ascending.] [ASCENDENT.] Controlling influence; governing power. "Barring ton, however, admits that superiority in song gives to birds an an amazing ascendancy over others, as is well known to bird-catchers."-Darwin: Descent of Man , pt. ii, ch. xiii. "The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority."-Macaulay: Hist. Eng., ch. 1.