Definitions

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

  • noun A descendant or heir, especially of a wealthy or prominent family.
  • noun Botany A detached shoot or bud from a plant that is joined to a rootstock in grafting.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A shoot or twig, especially one cut for the purpose of being grafted upon some other tree, or for planting.
  • noun Hence A descendant.

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

  • noun Formerly written also cion, and cyon., Formerly written also cion, and cyon. A shoot or sprout of a plant; a sucker.
  • noun Formerly written also cion, and cyon. A piece of a slender branch or twig cut for grafting.
  • noun Hence, a descendant; an heir.

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

  • noun A descendant, especially a first-generation descendant.
  • noun A detached shoot or twig containing buds from a woody plant, used in grafting; a shoot or twig in a general sense.
  • noun The heir to a throne.
  • noun A guardian.

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

  • noun a descendent or heir

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French cion, possibly of Germanic origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French cion, ciun, cyon, sion; cognate with French scion and Picard chion.

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Examples

Comments

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  • I always pronounced this wrong when reading "The Scions of Shannara", until I said it out loud and my father laughed at me.

    October 9, 2007

  • Sometimes the wrong pronunciation just sounds better, though. :-)

    October 9, 2007

  • I first heard this word in the original Tomb Raider game. Should I be ashamed to admit that?

    October 9, 2007

  • I first heard it in some church service or another.

    October 9, 2007

  • Possibly. Were you one of those skinny boys who glowed white? ;)

    October 10, 2007

  • Busted.

    October 10, 2007

  • "I frequently pluck wild apples of so rich and spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a scion from that tree, and I fail not to bring home my pockets full. But perchance, when I take one out of my desk and taste it in my chamber I find it unexpectedly crude,--sour enough to set a squirrel's teeth on edge and make a jay scream." - 'Wild Apples', Henry David Thoreau.

    December 14, 2007

  • SciON

    April 26, 2008