ascent

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act or process of rising or going upward.
• noun An advancement, especially in social status.
• noun An upward slope or incline.
• noun A going back in time or upward in genealogical succession.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of rising or ascending; upward movement: as, the ascent of vapors, or of a balloon.
• noun Hence A rising from a lower to a higher state, degree, or grade; advancement.
• noun The act of climbing or traveling up; the act of advancing from a lower to a higher position; a going up, as up a mountain, river, stairway, etc.
• noun An eminence; a hill or high place.
• noun The way by which one ascends; the means of ascending; acclivity; upward slope.
• noun The angle made by an ascending line or surface with the horizontal line or plane: as, the road has an ascent of five degrees.
• noun A proceeding upward or backward in time or in logical order of succession.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• The act of rising; motion upward; rise; a mounting upward
• The way or means by which one ascends.
• An eminence, hill, or high place.
• The degree of elevation of an object, or the angle it makes with a horizontal line; inclination; rising grade.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The act of ascending. A motion upwards.
• noun The way or means by which one ascends.
• noun An eminence, hill, or high place.
• noun The degree of elevation of an object, or the angle it makes with a horizontal line; inclination; rising grade.
• noun typography The ascender height in a typeface.
• noun An increase, for example in popularity or hierarchy

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a movement upward
• noun an upward slope or grade (as in a road)
• noun the act of changing location in an upward direction