: a detached living portion of a plant (such as a bud or shoot) joined to a stock in grafting and usually supplying solely aerial parts to a graft
Example Sentences
He's a scion of a powerful family.
Recent Examples on the WebThe third-generation scion of a Hong Kong real estate dynasty, the Cheng family ranks number three on this year’s Forbes Asia Hong Kong Rich List with a reported net worth of USD $26.6 billion. Marc Karimzadeh, Town & Country, 31 Aug. 2022 The 11th Ward alderman and scion of the Daley political dynasty, was later replaced by Nicole Lee, a director at United Airlines and the first Asian American woman and the first Chinese American to serve as a Chicago alderman. Chicago Tribune Staff, Chicago Tribune, 30 Aug. 2022 The reggae artist/scion has stayed busy with a steady stream of music over the past few years after releasing his debut EP, Higher Place, in 2020. Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 26 Aug. 2022 The federal investigation into once powerful and now disbarred attorney Alex Murdaugh’s alleged financial schemes is ramping up with a new fraud charge for South Carolina bank scion Russell Laffitte. Danielle Wallace, Fox News, 18 Aug. 2022 Branches from the rootstock may have a different type of leaf than the branches from the scion.oregonlive, 6 Aug. 2022 Cheney is the scion to a neoconservative legacy who over the years has been the face of everything that hardcore liberals have reviled. Daniel Strauss, The New Republic, 17 Aug. 2022 An article on Wednesday about a legal scion expected to be charged with the murders of his wife and son said that a gunshot fired at Alex Murdaugh did not hit him.New York Times, 15 July 2022 Murdaugh, 54, is the scion of a legal dynasty in the state’s Lowcountry region. Andrea Marks, Rolling Stone, 14 July 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle English sioun, syon "branch, twig, offshoot," borrowed from Anglo-French cioun, ciun, sioun (continental Old French cion "offspring, new growth of a plant") from ci-, going back to an Old Low Franconian outcome of West Germanic *kīþa- "sprout, bud" + Old French -on, suffix, perhaps here with diminutive value, going back to Latin -ōn-, -ō, suffix of nouns denoting persons with a prominent feature; *kīþa- "sprout, bud" (whence also Old English cīþ "sprout, shoot, bud," Old Saxon kīth "shoot," Old High German kīd, also -kīdi in frumikīdi "first one"), going back to Indo-European *ǵei̯H-ti- or *ǵiH-ti-, noun derivative of a verbal base *ǵei̯H- "burst out, sprout," whence, from a nasal present, Germanic *kīnan- (whence Old English cīnan "to burst open, gape, [of skin] be chapped," Old Saxon kīnan "to sprout," Old High German chīnan "to sprout, germinate," Swedish dialect kina "to yawn," Gothic keinan "to sprout," uskeinan "to put forth, send out [growth]," with past participle uskijanata lacking -n-); whence also, with suffixed *-dh-, Latvian ziêdu, ziêdêt "to bloom," Lithuanian žydė́ti
Note: The Anglo-French forms are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, though their source is unspecified; the Anglo-Norman Dictionary lacks an entry for this word. The suffix should perhaps be taken as filling out a word that otherwise has little phonetic substance. — Another generally cited nominal derivative of the Germanic verb is represented by Old English cine, cinu (weak feminine noun) "chink, fissure" (compare chink entry 1), Middle Dutch kēne "cleft, crack." Armenian cil "stem, bud, top of a crop plant" has also been adduced, though Martirosyan (Etymological Dictionary of the Armenian Inherited Lexicon, Brill, 2009) believes that "I[ndo-]E[uropean] proposals are not convincing."