scion

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English[edit]

WOTD – 30 April 2009

Alternative forms[edit]

Variant spellings[1]
  • <c>-initial, <n>-terminal:
    • (16th century):
    • (17th–18th centuries):
    • (19th century–present day):
      • cion (now chiefly in botanical senses)
  • <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 Middle English sion, sioun, syon, scion, cion, from Old French cion, ciun, cyon, sion; from Frankish *kīþō, *kīþ, from Proto-Germanic *kīþô, *kīþą, *kīþaz (“sprout”), from Proto-Indo-European *geye (“to split open, sprout”), same source as Old English ċīþ (“a young shoot; sprout; germ; sprig”), Old Saxon kīth (“sprout; germ”), Old High German kīdi (“offshoot; sprout; germ”). See also French scion and Picard chion.[1] Doublet of chit.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

scion (plural scions)

  1. A descendant, especially a first-generation descendant of a distinguished family.
    • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, volume 3, chapter 1:
      No senate seats in council for the dead; no scion of a time-honoured dynasty pants to rule over the inhabitants of a charnel house; the general's hand is cold, and the soldier has his untimely grave dug in his native fields, unhonoured, though in youth.
    • 1956, Delano Ames, chapter 9, in 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?
  2. The heir to a throne.
  3. A guardian.
  4. (botany) A detached shoot or twig containing buds from a woody plant, used in grafting; a shoot or twig in a general sense.

Translations[edit]

Trivia[edit]

One of three common words ending in -cion, the rest of which are coercion and suspicion.[2][3]

Further reading[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 “scion” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd Ed.; 1989]
  2. ^ Notes and Queries, Vol. VI, No. 10, 1889, October, p. 365
  3. ^ Editor and Publisher, Volume 9, 1909, p. 89

Anagrams[edit]

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old French cion, ciun, from Frankish *kithō, from Proto-Germanic *kīþô, *kīþą, from Proto-Indo-European *geye- (“to split open, to sprout”). Spelling influenced by scie (“saw”).

Pronunciation[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

Further reading[edit]

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