Quick answer
Decent means respectable, adequate or kind — a decent meal, a decent person. Descent means a downward movement, or ancestry: of Irish descent. A third word, dissent, means disagreement. All three sound similar and mean entirely different things.
The core difference
Three near-homophones with three separate meanings.
- decent — respectable, adequate: a decent effort.
- descent — going down; ancestry: a steep descent, of Scottish descent.
- dissent — disagreement: a dissenting opinion.
The ancestry sense
Descent meaning lineage comes from the same downward image — a family line coming down through generations. That is why descendant means someone further down the line, and descended from traces the direction.
The related words
Decency from the first; descend and descendant from the second; dissenter from the third. Keeping the noun families straight helps more than trying to hear the difference.
Frequently asked questions
Which one means ancestry?
Descent — of Irish descent, from the image of a family line coming down.
What is dissent?
Disagreement, especially with an official position — a dissenting opinion.
How do I keep the three apart?
By their families: decency, descend/descendant, and dissenter.
