scion

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Contents

English [edit]

WOTD – 30 April 2009    

Alternative forms [edit]

Variant spellings[1]
  • β forms (<c>-initial, <n>-terminal):
    • (15th century):
    • (16th century):
    • (17th–18th centuries):
    • (19th century–present day):
      • cion (now chiefly in botanical senses)
  • δ forms (<sc>-initial, <n>-terminal):
    • (14th century):
    • (15th century):
    • (16th century):
      • scion
    • (17th century):
    • (18th–19 th centuries):
    • (20th century–present day):
      • scion (standard spelling)

Etymology [edit]

From Old French cion, ciun, cyon, sion; cognate with French scion and Picard chion.[1]

Pronunciation [edit]

Noun [edit]

scion (plural scions)

  1. A descendant, especially a first-generation descendant.
  2. A detached shoot or twig containing buds from a woody plant, used in grafting; a shoot or twig in a general sense.
  3. The heir to a throne.
  4. A guardian.

Quotations [edit]

  • 1956, Delano Ames, chapter 9, Crime out of Mind[1]:
    Rudolf was the bold, bad Baron of traditional melodrama. Irene was young, as pretty as a picture, fresh from a music academy in England. He was the scion of an ancient noble family; she an orphan without money or friends.
  • 1966, Sholem Aleichem, An Early Passover, Clifton Pub. Co., paperback edition, page 24
    It was said to him that those people were the scions of Zion.
  • 1986, David Leavitt, The Lost Language of Cranes, Penguin, paperback edition, page 72
    He could show his parents Eliot, scion of Derek Moulthorp, and then how could they say he was throwing his life away?

Translations [edit]

descendant
(detached) shoot or twig
heir to a throne

References [edit]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 “scion” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd Ed.; 1989]

Anagrams [edit]

French [edit]

Noun [edit]

scion m (plural scions)

  1. scion (detached twig)
  2. tip of a fishing rod

Synonyms [edit]

See also [edit]

  • (tip of fishing rod): canne
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