ascendancy

• ascendency

ascend +‎ -ancy or ascendant +‎ -cy. The use in ecology is due to Robert Ulanowicz.

• IPA^(key): /əˈsɛndənsi/

ascendancy (countable and uncountable, plural ascendancies)

1. Supremacy; dominant control; the quality of being in the ascendant.

   Synonym: superiority

   • 2011 January 15, Phil McNulty, “Tottenham 0 - 0 Man Utd”, in BBC‎:

     Spurs ended the half in the ascendancy and Van der Vaart was again inches away from giving them the lead when he met Bale's cross but his header flew wide.

   • 2018 July 18, Owen Jones, “The hard right can only be defeated from the left, not from the centre”, in The Guardian‎:

     The Tory hard right is in the ascendancy, and a fascist street movement – led by convicted fraudster Tommy Robinson – represents a growing threat.

2. (historical, Ireland, sometimes capitalized) A class of Protestant landowners and professionals that dominated political and social life in Ireland up to the early 20th century
   • 1975, Terry Eagleton, New Left Review:

     [W. B. Yeats] belonged not to the ascendancy class but to the protestant bourgeoisie.

3. (ecology) A quantitative attribute of an ecosystem, defined as a function of the ecosystem's trophic network, and intended to indicate its ability to prevail against disturbance by virtue of its combined organization and size. [from 1986]
   • 2009, Sven Erik Jørgensen, editor, Ecosystem Ecology, Academic Press, →ISBN, page 63:

     Ascendency was found to be a useful indicator for the health assessment of marine benthic ecosystems over space and time.

• ascendance

• ascendant

• Protestant Ascendancy on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• ascendency (ecology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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