[f. ASCENDANT: see -ANCY.] The state or quality of being in the ascendant; paramount influence, dominant control, domination, sway. Const. over.
1712. Polesworth, Hist. John Bull, in Arbuthnot, Misc. Wks., 1751, II. xxii. 93. She had no small Ascendancy over John.
c. 1796. Burke, Let. R. Burke, Wks. IX. 425. The poor word, ascendency … is now employed to cover to the world the most rigid, and perhaps not the most wise, of all plans of policy. In plain old English, as they apply it, it signifies ‘pride and dominion’ on the one part of the relation, and on the other, ‘subserviency and contempt’—and it signifies nothing else.
1838–43. Arnold, Hist. Rome, III. xliii. 132. Overpowered by the ascendancy of Hannibal’s character.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 548. That he would not patiently submit to the ascendency of France.
(Of 40 authors examined, -ancy occurred in 4 18th-c. and 15 19th-c. writers, including Watts, Lyell, Arnold, Dickens, Mill, Lecky, Seeley, Earle, Trollope; -ency in 2 18th-c. and 14 19th-c. writers, including Burke, Hallam, Lingard, Thirlwall, Alison, Macaulay, Froude, Freeman; both occurred in editions of 5 writers.)
