Ascendant

1. a. Alt. of Ascendent
2. n. Ascent; height; elevation.
3. n. The horoscope, or that degree of the ecliptic which rises above the horizon at the moment of one’s birth; supposed to have a commanding influence on a person’s life and fortune.
4. n. Superiority, or commanding influence; ascendency; as, one man has the ascendant over another.
5. n. An ancestor, or one who precedes in genealogy or degrees of kindred; a relative in the ascending line; a progenitor; — opposed to descendant.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.